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LIBRARY OF THE 
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AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 


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THE LIBRARY 
OF THE 
UNIVERSITY ME IrtiNAIs 


ANIEL PARKER WILLI 





Peceiti1 on “Diet Luxe 





The Works of 


Edgar Allan Poe 


VOLUMES 5 and 6 


ILLUSTRATED 





Miscellaneous 





THE NOTTINGHAM SOCIETY 
New York :: Philadelphia :: Chicago 


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CONTENTS OF VOL. V 





THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION... oe. ce cole doe tale 


THE CoLLOguy OF MONOS AND UNA......... 
THE CONVERSATION OF EIROS AND CHARMION.... 
Or CRITICISM—PUBLIC AND PRIVATE........ 


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James Lawson ....... 
CAROLINE M. KIRKLAND...... 
PROSPER M. WETMORE .......- 
Emma C. EMBuURY...... 
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FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD.... 


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iv CONTENTS OF VOL. V 


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CARHERINE M. SEDGWICK of se siccew cinis b alelete ie wage LOE 
VEwis GAYLORD CLARK (cai. ole sinc sin seis eine mie eleien LO 
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ELIZABETH OAKES DMIDH NM eiio els oily cide! siehe siciecgleie chen ia eee 
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THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION 


( Yost 2 DICKENS, in a note now lying 
before me, alluding to an examination I 
once made of the mechanism of “ Barnaby 

Rudge,’’ says—“ By the way, are you aware that 

Godwin wrote his ‘Caleb Williams’ backwards? 

He first involved his hero in a web of difficulties, 

forming the second volume, and then, for the first, 

cast about him for some mode of accounting for 
what had been done.”’ 

I cannot think this the precise mode of procedure 
on the part of Godwin—and indeed what he him- 
self acknowledges, is not altogether in accordance 
with Mr. Dickens’ idea—but the author of ‘‘Caleb 
Williams’”’ was too good an artist not to perceive the 
advantage derivable from at least a somewhat 
similar process. Nothing is more clear than that 
every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to 
its dénouement before any thing be attempted with 
the men. It is only with the dénouement constantly 
in view that we can give a plot its indispensable ais 
of consequence, or causation, by making the inci- 
dents, and especially the tone at all points, tend to 
the development of the intention. 

There is a radical error, I think, in the usual mode 
of constructing a story. Either history affords a 
thesis—or one is suggested by an incident of the day 
—or, at best, the author sets himself to work in the 
combination of striking events to form merely the 
basis of his narrative—designing, generally, to fill 
in with description, dialogue, or autorial comment, 

I 


2 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


whatever crevices of fact, or action, may, from page 
to page, render themselves apparent. 

I prefer commencing with the consideration of 
an effect. Keeping originality always in view—for 
he is false to himself who ventures to dispense with 
so obvious and so easily attainable a source of in- 
terest—I say to myself, in the first place, ‘‘Of the 
innumerable effects, or impressions, of which the 
heart, the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is 
susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, 
select?’’ Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly 
a vivid effect, I consider whether it can be best 
wrought by incident or tone—whether by ordinary 
incidents and peculiar tone, or the converse, or by 
peculiarity both of incident and tone—afterward 
looking about me (or rather within) for such com- 
binations of event, or tone, as shall best aid me in 
the construction of the effect. 

I have often thought how interesting a magazine 
paper might be written by any author who would— 
that is to say, who could—detail, step by step, the 
processes by which any one of his compositions at- 
tained its ultimate point of completion. Why 
such a paper has never been given to the world, I 
am much at a loss to say—but, perhaps, the autorial 
vanity has had more to do with the omission than 
any one other cause. Most writers—poets in 
especial—prefer having it understood that they com- 
pose Dy a species of fine frenzy—an ecstatic intui- 
tion.—and would positively shudder at letting the 
public take a peep behind the scenes, at the elabo- 
rate and vacillating crudities of thought—at the true 
purposes seized only at the last moment—at the in- 
numerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the 
maturity of full view—at the fully matured fancies 
discarded in despair asunmanageable—at the cautious 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION 3 


selections and rejections—at the painful erasures and 
interpolations—in a word, at the wheels and pinions 
—the tackle for scene-shifting—the step-ladders and 
demon-traps—the cock’s feathers, the red paint and 
the black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases 
out of the hundred, constitute the properties of the 
literary hzstrio. 

I am aware, on the other hand, that the case is by 
no means common, in which an author is at all in 
condition to retrace the steps by which his conclu- 
sions have been attained. In general, suggestions, 
having arisen pell-mell, are pursued and forgotten 
in a similar manner. 

For my own part, I have neither sympathy with 
the repugnance alluded to, nor, at any time, the 
least difficulty in recalling to mind the progressive 
steps of any of my compositions; and, since the inter- 
est of an analysis, or reconstruction, such as I have 
considered a desideratum, is quite independent 
of any real or fancied interest in the thing analyzed, 
it will not be regarded as a breach of decorum on 
my part to show the modus operandi by which some 
one of my own works was put together. I select 
‘‘The Raven” as most generally known. It is my 
design to render it manifest that no one point in its 
composition is referable either to accident or intui- 
tion—that the work proceeded, step by step, to its 
completion with the precision and rigid consequence 
of a mathematical problem. 

Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem, per se, 
the circumstance—or say the necessity—which, in 
the first place, gave rise to the intention of composing 
a poem that should suit at once the popular and the 
critical taste. 

We commence, then, with this intention. 

The initial consideration was that of extent. If 


4 EDGARK ALLAN POE 


any literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, 
we must be content to dispense with the immensely 
important effect derivable from unity of impression 
—for, if two sittings be required, the affairs of the 
world interfere, and every thing like totality is at 
once destroyed. But since, ceteris paribus, no poet 
can afford to dispense with any thing that may 
advance his design, it but remains to be seen whether 
there is, in extent, any advantage to counterbalance 
the loss of unity which attends it. Here I say no, 
at once. What we term a long poem, is, in fact, 
merely a succession of brief ones—that is to say, of 
brief poetical effects. It is needless to demonstrate 
that a poem is such, only inasmuch as it intensely 
excites, by elevating, the soul; and all intense excite- 
ments are, through a psychal necessity, brief. For 
this reason, at least one half of the ‘‘ Paradise Lost’”’ 
is essentially prose—a succession of poetical excite- 
ments interspersed, znevitably, with corresponding de- 
pressions—the whole being deprived. through the 
extremeness of its length, of the vastly important 
artistic element, or unity, of effect. 

It appears evident, then, that there is a distinct 
limit, as regards length, to all works of literary art— 
the limit of a single sitting—and that, although in cer- 
tain classes of prose composition, such as ‘‘Robinson 
Crusoe,” (demanding no unity,) this limit may be 
advantageously overpassed, it can never properly 
be overpassed in a poem. Within this limit, the 
extent of a poem may be made to bear mathematical 
relation to its merit—in other words, to the excite- 
ment or elevation—again, in other words, to the 
degree of the true poetical effect which it is capable 
of inducing; for it is clear that the brevity must be 
_ in direct ratio of the intensity of the intended effect :— 
this, with one proviso—that a certain degree of du- 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION 5 


ration is absolutely requisite for the production of 
any effect at all. 

Holding in view these considerations, as well as 
that degree of excitement which I deemed not above 
the popular, while not below the critical, taste, I 
reached at once what I conceived the proper length 
for my intended poem—a length of about one 
hundred lines. It is, in fact, a hundred and eight. 

My next thought concerned the choice of an im- 
pression, or effect, to be conveyed: and here I may 
as well observe that, throughout the construction, I 
kept steadily in view the design of rendering the 
work universally appreciable. I should be carried 
too far out of my immediate topic were I to demon- 
strate a point upon which I have repeatedly insisted, 
and which, with the poetical, stands not in the 
slightest need of demonstration—the point, I mean, 
that Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the © 
poem. A few words, however, in elucidation of my 
real meaning, which some of my friends have 
evinced a disposition to misrepresent. That pleasure 
which is at once the most intense, the most elevating, 
and the most pure, is, I believe, found in the contem- 
plation of the beautiful. When, indeed, men speak 
of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is 
supposed, but an effect—they refer, in short, just to 
that intense and pure elevation of soul—not of in- 
tellect, or of heart—upon which I have commented, 
and which is experienced in consequence of contem- 
plating ‘‘the beautiful.” Now I designate Beauty 
as the province of the poem, merely because it is an_ 
obvious rule of Art that effects should be made to 
spring from direct causes—that objects should be 
attained through means best adapted for their at- 
tainment—no one as yet having been weak enough to 
deny that the peculiar elevation alluded to, is most 


6 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


readily attained in the poem. Now the object, 
Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the 
object Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, 
although attainable, to acertain extent, in poetry, far 
more readily attainable in prose. ‘Truth, in fact, de- 
mands a precision, and Passion a homeliness (the truly 
_ passionate will comprehend me) which are absolutely 
antagonistic to that Beauty which, I maintain, is the 
excitement, or pleasurable elevation, of the soul. It 
by no means follows from any thing here said, that 
passion, or even truth, may not be introduced, and 
even profitably introduced, into a poem—for they 
may serve in elucidation, or aid the general effect, 
as do discords in music, by contrast—but the true 
artist will always contrive, first, to tone them into 
proper subservience to the predominant aim, and, 
secondly, to enveil them, as far as possible, in that 
Beauty which is the atmosphere and the essence of — 
the poem. 

Regarding, then, Beauty as my province, my next 
question referred to the tone of its highest manifesta- 
tion—and all experience has shown that this tone 
is one of sadness. Beauty of whatever kind, in its 
supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive 
soul totears. Melancholy is thus the most legitimate 
of all the poetical tones. 

The length, the province, and the tone, being thus 
determined, I betook myself to ordinary induction, 
with the view of obtaining some artistic piquancy 
which might serve me as a key-note in the construc- 
tion of the poem—some pivot upon which the 
whole structure might turn. In carefully thinking 
over all the usual artistic effects—or more properly 
points, in the theatrical sense—I did not fail to per- 
ceive immediately that no one had been so univer- 
sally employed as that of the refrain. The univer- 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION 


sality of its employment sufficed to assure me of its 
intrinsic value, and spared me the necessity of sub- 
mitting it to analysis. I considered it, however, with 
regard to its susceptibility of improvements, and soon 
saw it to be in a primitive condition. As commonly 
used, the refrain, or burden, not only is limited to 
lyric verse, but depends for its impression upon the 
force of monotone—both in sound and _ thought. 
The pleasure is deduced solely from the sense of 
identity—of repetition. Iresolved to diversify, and 
so heighten, the effect, by adhering, in general, to 
the monotone of sound, while I continually varied 
that of thought: that is to say, I determined to 
produce continuously novel effects, by the variation 
of the application of the refrain—the refrain itself 
remaining, for the most part, unvaried. 

These points being settled, J next bethought me of 
the nature of my refrain. Since its application was 
to be repeatedly varied, it was clear that the refrain 
itself must be brief, for there would have been an 
insurmountable difficulty in frequent variations of 
application in any sentence of length. In proportion 
to the brevity of the sentence, would, of course, be 
the facility of the variation. This led me at once to 
a single word as the best refrain. 

The question now arose as to the character of the 
word. Having made up my mind to a refrain, the 
division of the poem into stanzas was, of course, a 
corollary: the refrain forming the close to each stanza. 
That such a close, to have force, must be sonorous 
and susceptible of protracted emphasis, admitted no 
doubt: and these considerations, inevitably led me 
to the long o as the most sonorous vowel, in connec- 
tion with 7 as the most producible consonant. 

The sound of the refrain being thus determined, 
it became necessary to select a word embodying 


8 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


this sound, and at the same time in the fullest pos- 
sible keeping with that melancholy which I had pre- 
determined as the tone of the poem. In such a 
search it would have been absolutely impossible to 
overlook the word ‘‘Nevermore.”’ In fact, it was the 
very first which presented itself. 

The next desideratum was a pretext for the con- 
tinuous use of the one word ‘‘nevermore.’”’ In observ- 
ing the difficulty which I at once found in inventing 
a sufficiently plausible reason for its continuous 
repetition, I did not fail to perceive that this difficulty 
arose solely from the pre-assumption that the word 
was to be so continuously or monotonously spoken 
by a human being—I did not fail to perceive, in 
short, that the difficulty lay in the reconciliation of 
this monotony with the exercise of reason on the 
part of the creature repeating the word. Here, 
then, immediately arose the idea of a non-reasoning © 
creature capable of speech; and, very naturally, a 
parrot, in the first instance, suggested itself, but was 
superseded forthwith by a Raven, as equally capable 
of speech, and infinitely more in keeping with the 
intended tone. 

I had now gone so far as the conception of a Raven 
—the bird of ill omen—monotonously repeating the 
one word, ‘‘Nevermore,”’ at the conclusion of each 
stanza, in a poem of melancholy tone, and in length 
about one hundred lines. Now, never losing sight 
of the object supremeness, or perfection, at all points, 
I asked myself—‘‘Of all melancholy topics, what, 
according to the universal understanding of mankind, 
is the most melancholy?’’ Death—was the obvious 
reply. ‘‘And when,’ I said, ‘‘is this most melancholy 
of topics most poetical?’”’ From what I have already 
explained at some length, the answer, here also, is 
obvious—‘‘When it most closely allies itself to 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION 9 


Beauty: the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, 
unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the 
world—and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips 
best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved 
lover.” : 

I had now to combine the two ideas, of a lover 
lamenting his deceased mistress and a Raven con- 
tinuously repeating the word ‘‘ Nevermore.’’—I had 
to combine these, bearing in mind my design of 
varying, at every turn, the application of the word 
repeated ; but the only intelligible mode of such com- 
bination is that of imagining the Raven employing 
the word in answer to the queries of the lover. And 
here it was that I saw at once the opportunity af- 
forded for the effect on which I had been depending 
—that is to say, the effect of the variation of applica- 
tion. I saw that I could make the first query pro- 
pounded by the lover—the first query to which the 
Raven should reply “‘Nevermore”—that I could 
make this first query a commonplace one—the 
second less so—the third still less, and so on—until 
at length the lover, startled from his original noncha- 
lance by the melancholy character of the word itself 
—by its frequent repetition—and by a consideration 
of the ominous reputation of the fowl that uttered it 
—is at length excited to superstition, and wildly pro- 
pounds queries of a far different character—queries 
whose solution he has passionately at heart—pro- 
pounds them half in superstition and half in that 
species of despair which delights in self-torture— 
propounds them not altogether because he believes 
in the prophetic or demoniac character of the bird 
(which, reason assures him, is merely repeating a les- 
son learned by rote) but because he experiences a 
frenzied pleasure in so modeling his questions as to 
receive from the expected ‘‘Nevermore”’ the most 


10 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


delicious because the most intolerable of sorrow. 
Perceiving the opportunity thus afforded me—or, 
more strictly, thus forced upon me in the progress of 
the construction—I first established in mind the cli- 
max, or concluding query—that query to which 
‘“Nevermore”’ should be in the last place an answer 
—that query in reply to which this word ‘‘Never- 
more” should involve the uttermost conceivable 
amount of sorrow and despair. 

Here then the poem may be said to have its be- 
ginning—at the end, where all works of art should 
begin—for it was here, at this point of my preconsid- 
erations, that I first put pen to paper in the com- 
position of the stanza: 


“Prophet,’’ said I, “thing of evil! prophet still if bird or 
devil! } 

By that heaven that bends above us—by that God we both 
adore, 

Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if within the distant Aidenn, 

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name 
Lenore— 

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name 
Lenore.”’ 

Quoth the raven “ Nevermore.” 


I composed this stanza, at this point, first that, 
by establishing the climax, I might the better vary 
and graduate, as regards seriousness and importance, 
the preceding queries of the lover—and, secondly, 
that I might definitely settle the rhythm, the metre, 
and the length and general arrangement of the 
stanza—as well as graduate the stanzas which were 
to precede, so that none of them might surpass this 
in rhythmical effect. Had I been able, in the subsi- 
quent composition, to construct more vigorous 
stanzas, I should, without scruple, have purposely 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION 1 


enfeebled them, so as not to interfere with the 
climacteric effect. 

And here I may as well say a few words of the 
versification. My first object (as usual) was original- 
ity. The extent to which this has been neglected, 
in versification, is one of the most unaccountable 
things in the world. Admitting that there is little 
possibility of variety in mere rhythm, it is still clear 
that the possible varieties of metre and stanza are 
absolutely infinite—and yet, for centuries, no man, in 
_ verse, has ever done, or ever seemed to think of doing, an 
original thing. ‘The fact is, that originality (unless in 
minds of very unusual force) is by no meansa matter, 
as some suppose, of impulse orintuition. In general, 
to be found, it must be elaborately sought, and 
although a positive merit of the highest class, 
demands in its attainment less of invention than 
negation. 

Of course, I pretend to no originality in either the 
rhythm or metre of the ‘‘Raven.” The former is 
trochaic—the latter is octameter acatalectic, alter- 
nating with heptameter catalectic repeated in the 
refrain of the fifth verse, and terminating with tetra- 
meter catalectic. Less pedantically—the feet em- 
ployed throughout (trochees) consist of a long syl- 
lable followed by a short: the first line of the stanza 
consists of eight of these feet—the second of [seven 
and a half (in effect two-thirds) —the third of eight 
- the fourth of seven and a half—the fifth the same 
—the sixth three and a half. Now, each of these 
lines, taken individually, has been employed before, 
and what originality the ‘‘Raven”’ has, is in their 
combination znio stanza; nothing even remotely ap- 
proaching this combination has ever been attempted. 
The effect of this originality of combination is aided 
by other unusual, and some altogether novel effects, 


12 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


arising from an extension of the application of the 
principles of rhyme and alliteration. 

The next point to be considered was the mode of 
bringing together the lover and the Raven—and the 
first branch of this consideration was the locale. 
For this the most natural suggestion might seem to 
be a forest, or the fields—but it has always appeared 
to me that a close circumscription of space is abso- 
lutely necessary to the effect of insulated incident :-— 
it has the force of a frame to a picture. It has an 
indisputable moral power in keeping concentrated 
the attention, and, of course, must not be confounded 
with mere unity of place. 

I determined, then, to place the lover in his 
chamber—in a chamber rendered sacred to him by 
memories of her who had frequented it. The room is 
represented as richly furnished—this in mere pursu- 
ance of the ideas I have already explained on the 
subject of Beauty, as the sole true poetical thesis. 

The locale being thus determined, I had now to 
introduce the bird—and the thought of introducing 
him through the window was inevitable. The idea 
of making the lover suppose, in the first instance, 
that the flapping of the wings of the bird against the 
shutter, is a ‘‘tapping”’ at the door, originated in a 
wish to increase, by prolonging, the reader’s curiosity, 
and in a desire to admit the incidental effect arising 
from the lover’s throwing open the door, finding all 
dark, and thence adopting the half-fancy that it Was 
the spirit of his mistress that knocked. 

I made the night tempestuous, first, to account for 
the Raven’s seeking admission, and secondly, for 
the effect of contrast with the (physical) serenity 
within the chamber. 

I made the bird alight on the bust of Pallas, also 
for the effect of contrast between the marble and the 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION 13 


plumage—it being understood that the bust was ab- 
solutely suggested by the bird—the bust of Pallas 
being chosen, first, as most in keeping with the 
scholarship of the lover, and, secondly, for the son- 
orousness of the word Pallas, itself. 

About the middle of the poem, also, I have availed 
myself of the force of contrast, with a view of deep- 
ening the ultimate impression. For example, an 
air of the fantastic—approaching as nearly to the 
ludicrous as was admissible—is given to the Raven’s 
entrance. He comes in “‘with many a flirt and 
flutter.”’ 


Not the least obeisance made he—not a moment stopped or 
stayed he. 

But uith mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber 
door. 


In the two stanzas which follow, the design is 
more obviously carried out :— 


Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling 
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, 
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven thou,’’ I said, “art 
sure no craven. 
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the 
nightly shore— 
Tell.me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian 
shore?’’ 
Quoth the Raven ‘‘Nevermore,”’ 


sy 


Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so 
plainly, 
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore; 
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being 
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door— 
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, 
With such name as “ Nevermore.”’ 


th EDGAR ALLAN POE 


The effect of the dénouement being thus provided 
for, I immediately drop the fantastic for a tone 
of the most profound seriousness:—this tone com- 
mencing in the stanza directly following the one last 
quoted, with the line, 


But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke 
only, etc. | 


From this epoch the lover no longer jests—no 
longer sees any thing even of the fantastic in the 
Raven’s demeanor. He speaks of him as a “‘grim, 
ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore,” 
and feels the ‘‘fiery eyes’’ burning into his ‘‘bosom’s 
core.” This revolution of thought, or fancy, on the 
lover’s part, is intended to induce a similar one on 
the part of the reader—to bring the mind into a 
proper frame for the dénouement—which is now 
brought about as rapidly and as dzrectly as possible. 

With the dénouement proper—with the Raven’s 
reply, ‘‘Nevermore,’”’ to the lover’s final demand 
if he shall meet his mistress in another world—the 
poem, in its obvious phase, that of a simple narra- 
tive, may be said to have its completion. So far, 
every thing is within the limits of the accountable— 
of the real. A raven, having learned by rote the 
single word ‘‘ Nevermore,” and having escaped from 
the custody of its owner, is driven at midnight, 
through the violence of a storm, to seek admission 
at a window from which a light still gleams—the 
chamber-window of a student, occupied half in por- 
ing over a volume, half in dreaming of a beloved 
mistress deceased. The casement being thrown open 
at the fluttering of the bird’s wings, the bird itself 
perches on the most convenient seat out of the 
immediate reach of the student, who, amused by the 
incident and the oddity of the visitor’s demeanor, 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION 15 


demands of it, in jest and without looking for a 
reply, itsname. The raven addressed, answers with 
its customary word, ‘‘Nevermore”—a word which 
finds immediate echo in the melancholy heart of the 
student, who, giving utterance aloud to certain 
thoughts suggested by the occasion, is again startled 
by the fowl’s repetition of ‘‘Nevermore.”’ Thestudent 
now guesses the state of the case, but is impelled, 
as I have before explained, by the human thirst for 
self-torture, and in part by superstition, to propound 
such queries to the bird as will bring him, the lover, 
the most of the luxury of sorrow, through the 
anticipated answer ‘‘Nevermore.’’ With the indul- 
gence, to the extreme, of this self-torture, the narra- 
tion, m what I have termed its first or obvious phase, 
has a natural termination,and so far there has been 
no overstepping of the limits of the real. 

But in subjects so handled, however skilfully, or 
with however vivid an array of incident, there is 
always a certain hardness or nakedness, which repels 
the artistical eye. Two things are invariably re- 
quired—first, some amount of complexity, or more 
properly, adaptation; and, secondly, some amount 
of suggestiveness—some under current, however 
indefinite, of meaning. It is this latter, in especial, 
which imparts to a work of art so much of that 
richness (to borrow from colloquy a forcible term) 
which we are too fond of confounding with the 
ddeal. It is the excess of the suggested meaning— 
it is the rendering this the upper instead of the 
under current of the theme—which turns into prose 
(and that of the very flattest kind) the so-called 
poetry of the so-called transcendentalists. 

Holding these opinions, I added the two con- 
cluding stanzas of the poem—their suggestiveness 
being thus made to pervade all the narrative which 


16 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


has preceded them. The under current of meaning 
is rendered first apparent in the lines— 


“Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from 
off my door!”’ 
Quoth the Raven ‘‘Nevermore!”’ 


It will be observed that the words, ‘‘from out 
my heart,” involve the first metaphorical expression 
in the poem. They, with the answer, ‘‘ Nevermore,” 
dispose the mind to seek a moral in all that has been 
previously narrated. The reader begins now to re- 
gard the Raven as emblematical—but it is not until 
the very last line of the very last stanza, that the 
intention of making him emblematical of Mournful 
and Never-ending Remembrance is permitted distinctly 
to be seen: 


And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, 
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; 
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is 
dreaming, 
And the lamplight o’er him streaming throws his shadow on 
the floor; 
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the 
floor 
Shall be lifted—nevermore, 


THE COLLOQUY OF MONOS AND UNA 117 


THE COLLOQUY OF MONOS AND UNA 





MedXoura TavTra 
Me Sophocles—Antig : 
These things are in the future 


Una. “Bornagain?’”’ 

Monos. Yes, fairest and best beloved Una, 
“born again.”” These were the words upon whose 
mystical meaning I had so long pondered, rejecting 
the explanations of the priesthood, until Death 
himself resolved for me the secret. 

Una. Death! 

Monos. How strangely, sweet Una, you echo 
my words! I observe, too, a vacillation in your 
step—a joyous inquietude in your eyes. You are 
confused and oppressed by the majestic novelty of 
the Life Eternal. Yes, it was of Death I spoke. 
And here how singularly sounds that word which 
of old was wont to bring terror to all hearts—throw- 
ing a mildew upon all pleasures! 

Una. Ah, Death, the spectre which sate at all 
feasts! How often, Monos, did we lose ourselves 
in speculations upon its nature! How mysteriously 
did it act as a check to human bliss—saying unto it 
“thus far, and no farther!’ That earnest mutual 
love, my own Monos, which burned within our 
bosoms—how vainly did we flatter ourselves, feeling 
happy in its first upspringing, that our happiness 
would strengthen with its strength! Alas! as it 
grew, so grew in our hearts the dread of that evil 
hour which was hurrying to separate us forever! 
Thus, in time, it became painful tolove. Hate would 
have been mercy then. 

VoL, V—2 


18 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Monos. Speak not here of these griefs, dear 
Una—mine, mine forever now! 

Una. But the memory of past sorrow—is it not 
present joy? J have much to say yet of the things 
which have been. Above all, I burn to know the 
incidents of your own passage through the dark 
Valley and Shadow. 

Monos. And when did the radiant Una ask 
anything of her Monos in vain? I will be minute 
in relating all—but at what point shall the weird 
narrative begin? 

Una. Atwhat point? 

Monos. Youhave said. 

Una. Monos, I comprehend you. In Death we 
have both learned the propensity of man to define 
the indefinable. I will not say, then, commence 
with the moment of life’s cessation—-but commence 
with that sad, sad instant when, the fever having 
abandoned you, you sank into a breathless and 
motionless torpor, and I pressed down your pallid 
eyelids with the passionate fingers of love. | 

Monos. One word first, my Una, in regard to 
man’s general condition at this epoch. You will 
remember that one or two of the wise among our 
forefathers—wise in fact, although not in the world’s 
esteem—had ventured to doubt the propriety of the 
term “improvement,” as applied to the progress of 
our civilization. ‘There were periods in each of the 
five or six centuries immediately preceding our 
dissolution, when arose some vigorous intellect, 
boldly contending for those principles whose truth 
appears now, to our disenfranchised reason, so 
utterly obvious—principles which should have 
taught our race to submit to the guidance of the 
natural laws, rather than attempt their control. 
At long intervals some master-minds appeared, 


THE COLLOQUY OF MONOS AND UNA 1x9 


looking upon each advance in practical science as a 
retro-gradation in-the true utility. Occasionally 
the poetic intellect—that intellect which we now 
feel to have been the most exalted of all—since those 
truths which to us were of the most enduring im- 
portance could only be reached by that analogy 
which speaks in proof-tones to the imagination alone, 
and to the unaided reason bears no weight—oc- 
casionally did this poetic intellect proceed a step 
farther in the evolving of the vague idea of the 
philosophic, and find in the mystic parable that tells 
of the tree of knowledge, and of its forbidden fruit, 
death-producing a distinct intimation that knowledge 
was not meet for man in the infant condition of his 
soul. And these men—the poets—living and 
perishing amid the scorn of the “utilitarians’”— 
of rough pedants, who arrogated to themselves a 
title which could have been properly applied only 
to the scorned—these men, the poets, pondered 
piningly, yet not unwisely, upon the ancient days 
when our wants were not more simple than our 
enjoyments were keen—days when mirth was a 
word unknown, so solemnly deep-toned was happi- 
ness—holy, august and blissful days, when blue 
rivers ran undamned, between hills unhewn, into far 
forest solitudes, primzval, odorous, and unexplored. 

Yet these noble exceptions from the general 
misrule served but to strengthen it by opposition. 
Alas! we had fallen upon the most evil of all our 
evil days. The great “movement’’—that was the 
cant term—went on: a diseased commotion, moral 
and physical. Art—the Arts—arose supreme, and, 
once enthroned, cast chains upon the intellect which 
had elevated them to power. Man, because he 
could not but acknowledge the majesty of Nature, 
fell into childish exultation at his acquired and still- 


20 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


increasing dominion over her elements. Even while 
he stalked a God in his own fancy, an infantine 
imbecility came over him. As might be supposed 
from the origin of his disorder, he grew infected 
with system, and with abstraction. He enwrapped 
himself in generalities. Among other odd ideas, that 
of universal equality gained ground; and in the face 
of analogy and of God—in despite of the loud warning 
voice of the laws of gradation so visibly pervading 
all things in Earth and Heaven—wild attempts 
at an omni-prevalent Democracy were made. Yet 
this evil sprang necessarily from the leading evil, 
Knowledge. Man could not both know and succumb. 
Meantime huge smoking cities arose, innumerable. 
Green leaves shrank before the hot breath of fur- 
naces. The fair face of Nature was deformed as 
with the ravages of some loathsome disease. And 
methinks, sweet Una, even our slumbering sense of 
the forced and of the far-fetched might have arrested 
us here. But now it appears that we had worked 
out our own destruction in the perversion of our 
taste, or rather in the blind neglect of its culture in the 
schools. For, in truth, it was at this crisis that taste 
alone—that faculty which, holding a middle position 
between the pure intellect and the moral sense, 
could never safely have been disregarded—it was 
“now that taste alone could have led us gently back to 
Beauty, to Nature, and to Life. But alas for the 
pure contemplative spirit and majestic intuition of 
Plato! Alas for the povru, which he justly regarded 
as an all-sufficient education for the soul! Alas for 
him and for it!—since both were most desperately 
needed when both were most entirely forgotten or 
despised.* 


***Tt will be hard to discover a better [method of education] 
than that which the experience of so many ages has already 


THE COLLOQUY OF MONOS AND UNA ax 


Pascal, a philosopher whom we both love, has 
said, how truly!—‘“ que tout notre raisonnement se 
redutt @ céder au sentiment’; and it is not impossible 
that the sentiment of the natural, had time permitted 
it, would have regained its old ascendency over the 
harsh mathematical reason of the schools. But 
this thing was not to be. Prematurely induced by 
intemperance of knowledge, the old age of the world 
drew on. This the mass of mankind saw not, or, 
living lustily although unhappily, affected not to see. 
But, for myself, the Earth’s records had taught me 
to look for widest ruin as the price of highest 
civilization. I had imbibed a prescience of our 
Fate from comparison of China the simple and 
enduring, with Assyria the architect, with Egypt the 
astrologer, with Nubia, more crafty than either, the 
turbulent mother of all Arts. In history* of these 
regions I met with a ray from the Future. ‘The 
individual artificialities of the three latter were 
local diseases of the Earth, and in their individual 
overthrows we had seen local remedies applied; 
but for the infected world at large I could anticipate 
no regeneration save in death. That man, as a 
race, should not become extinct, I saw that he must 
be “born again.” 


discovered; and this may be summed up as consisting in gym- 
nastics for the body, and music for the soul.’’-—Repub. hb. 2. 
‘‘For this reason is a musical education most essential; since 
it causes Rhythm and Harmony to penetrate most intimately 
into the soul, taking the strongest hold upon it, filling it with 
beauty and making the man beuutiful-minded. . . . . He will 
praise and admire the beautiful; will receive it with joy into his 
soul, will feed upon it, and assimilate his own condttion with 1t.’’ 
—Ibid. lib. 3. Music (uovo.nn) had, however, among the Athe- 
nians, a far more comprehensive signification than with us. 
It included not only the harmonies of time and of tune, but the 
eas diction, sentiment and creation, each in its widest sense. 
he study of music was with them, in fact, the general culti- 
vation of the taste—of that which recognizes the beautiful—in 
contra-distinction from reason, which deals only with the true. 
* “History,” from wropeyv, to contemplate. 


22 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


And now it was, fairest and dearest, that we 
wrapped our spirits, daily, in dreams. Now it was 
that, in twilight, we discoursed of the days to come, 
when the Art-scarred surface of the Earth, having 
undergone that purification* which alone could 
efface its rectangular obscenities, should clothe itself 
anew in the verdure and the mountain-slopes and the 
smiling waters of Paradise, and be rendered at length 
a fit dwelling-place for man:—for man the Death- 
purged—for man to whose now exalted intellect 
there should be poison in knowledge no more—for 
the redeemed, regenerated, blissful, and now im- 
mortal, but still for the material, man. 

Una.—Well do I remember these conversations, 
dear Monos; but the epoch of the fiery overthrow 
was not so near at hand as we believed, and as the 
corruption you indicate did surely warrant us in 
believing. Men lived; and died individually. You > 
yourself sickened, and passed into the grave; and 
thither your constant Una speedily followed you. 
And though the century which has since elapsed, 
and whose conclusion brings us thus together once 
more, tortured our slumbering senses with no 
impatience of duration, yet, my Monos, it was a 
century still. 

Monos. Say, rather, a point in the vague in- 
finity. Unquestionably, it was in the Earth’s 
dotage that I died. Wearied at heart with anxieties 
which had their origin inthe general turmoil and 
decay, I succumbed to the fierce fever. After some 
few days of pain, and many of dreamy delirium 
replete with ecstasy, the manifestations of which 
you mistook for pain, while I longed but was impo- 
tent to undeceive you—after some days there 


* The word “‘ purification” seems here to be used with refer- 
ence to its root in the Greek myo fire 


THE COLLOQUY OF MONOS AND UNA 23 


came upon me, as you have said, a breathless and 
motionless torpor; and this was termed Death by 
those who stood around me. 

Words are vague things. My condition did not 
deprive me of sentience. It appeared to me not 
greatly dissimilar to the extreme quiescence of him, 
who, having slumbered long and profoundly, lying 
motionless and fully prostrate in a midsummer 
noon, begins to steal slowly back into consciousness, 
through the mere sufficiency of his sleep, and without 
being awakened by external disturbances. 

I breathed no longer. The pulses were still. 
The heart had ceased to beat. Volition had not 
departed, but was powerless. The senses were 
unusually active, although eccentrically so—assum- 
ing often each other’s functions at random. The 
taste and the smell were inextricably confounded, 
and became one sentiment, abnormal and intense. 
The rose-water with which your tenderness had 
moistened my lips to the last, affected me with 
sweet fancies of flowers—fantastic flowers, far more 
lovely than any of the old Earth, but whose proto- 
types we have here blooming around us. The 
eyelids, transparent and bloodless, offered no complete 
impediment to vision. As volition was in abeyance, 
the balls could not roll in their sockets—but all 
objects within the range of the visual hemisphere 
Were seen with more or less distinctness; the rays 
which fell upon the external retina, or into the corner 
of the eye, producing a more vivid effect than those 
which struck the front or interior surface. Yet, in 
the former instance, this effect was so far anomalous 
that I appreciated it only as sownd—sound sweet or 
discordant as the matters presenting themselves 
at my side were light or dark in shade—curved 
or angular in outline. The hearing, at the same 


24 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


time, although excited in degree, was not irregular in 
action—estimating real sounds with an extravagance 
of precision, not less than of sensibility. Touch 
had undergone a modification more peculiar. Its 
impressions were tardily received, but pertinaciously 
retained, and resulted always in the highest physical — 
pleasure. Thus the pressure of your sweet fingers 
upon my eyelids, at first only recognized through 
vision, at length, long after their removal, filled 
my whole being with a sensual delight immeasurable. 
I say with a sensual delight. All my perceptions 
were purely sensual. The materials furnished the 
passive brain by the senses were not in the least 
degree wrought into shape by the deceased under- 
standing. Of pain there was some little; of pleasure 
there was much; but of moral pain or pleasure none 
at all. Thus your wild sobs floated into my ear 
with all their mournful cadences, and were appreciated 
in their every variation of sad tone; but they were 
soft musical sounds and no more; they conveyed to 
the extinct reason no intimation of the sorrows 
which gave them birth; while the large and constant 
tears which fell upon my face, telling the bystanders 
of a heart which broke, thrilled every fibre of my 
frame with ecstasy alone. And this was in truth the 
Death of which these bystanders spoke reverently, in 
low whispers—you, sweet Una, gaspingly, with 
loud cries. 

They attired me for the coffin—three or four dark 
figures which flitted busily to and fro. As these 
crossed the direct line of my vision they affected me 
as forms; but upon passing to my side their images 
impressed me with the idea of shrieks, groans, and 
other dismal expressions of terror, or horror, or of 
wo. You alone, habited in a white robe, passed in 
all directions musically about me. 


THE COLLOQUY OF MONOS AND UNA 258 


The day waned; and, as its light faded away, I 
became possessed by a vague uneasiness—an 
anxiety such as the sleeper feels when sad real 
_ sounds fall continuously within his ear—low distant 
bell-tones, solemn, at long but equal intervals, and 
commingling with melancholy dreams. Night ar- 
rived; and with its shadows a heavy discomfort. 
It oppressed my limbs with the oppression of some 
dull weight, and was palpable. There was also a 
moaning sound, not unlike the distant reverberation 
of surf, but more continuous, which, beginning with 
the first twilight, had grown in strength with the 
darkness. Suddenly lights were brought into the 
room, and this reverberation became forthwith 
interrupted into frequent unequal bursts of the same 
sound, but less dreary and less distinct. The 
ponderous oppression was in a great measure relieved; 
and, issuing from the flame of each lamp, (for there 
were many,) there flowed unbrokenly into my ears 
a strain of melodious monotone. And when now, 
dear Una, approaching the bed upon which [I lay 
outstretched, you sat gently by my side, breathing 
odor from your sweet lips, and pressing them upon 
my brow, there arose tremulously within my bosom, 
and mingling with the merely physical sensations 
which circumstances had called forth, a something 
akin to sentiment itself—a feeling that, half ap- 
preciating, half responded to your earnest love 
and sorrow; but this feeling took no root in the pulse- 
less heart, and seemed indeed rather a shadow than 
a reality, and faded quickly away, first into extreme 
quiescence, and then into a purely sensual pleasure 
as before. | 

And now, from the wreck and the chaos of the 
usual senses, there appeared to have arisen within 
me a sixth, all perfect. In its exercise I found a 


26 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


wild delight—yet a delight still physical, inasmuch 
as the understanding had in it no part. Motion 
in the animal frame had fully ceased. No muscle 
quivered; no nerve thrilled; no artery throbbed. 
But there seemed to have sprung up in the brain, 
that of which no words could convey to the merely 
human intelligence even an indistinct conception. 
Let me term it a mental pendulous pulsation. It 
was the moral embodiment of man’s abstract idea 
of Time. By the absolute equalization of this move- 
ment—or of such as this—had the cycles of the fir- 
mamental orbs themselves, been adjusted. By 
its aid I measured the irregularities of the clock 
upon the mantel, and of the watches of theattendants. 
Their tickings came sonorously to my ears. The 
slightest deviations from the true proportion—and 
these deviations were omniprevalent—affected me 
just as violations of abstract truth were wont, on 
earth, to affect the moral sense. Although no two 
of the time-pieces in the chamber struck the indi- 
vidual seconds accurately together, yet I had no 
difficulty in holding steadily in mind the tones, and 
the respective momentary errors of each. And this 
—this keen, perfect, self-existing sentiment of 
duration—this sentiment existing (as man could not 
possibly have conceived it to exist) independently 
of any succession of events—this idea—this sixth 
sense, upspringing from the ashes of the rest, was 
the first obvious and certain step of the intemporal 
soul upon the threshold of the temporal Eternity. 
It was midnight; and you still sat by my side 
All others had departed from the chamber of Death. 
They had deposited me in the coffin. The lamps 
burned flickeringly; for this I knew by the tremu- 
lousness of the monotonous strains. But, suddenly’ 
these strains diminished in distinctness and in 


THE COLLOQUY OF MONOS AND UNA 24 


volume. Finally they ceased. The perfume in 
my nostrils died away. Forms affected my vision 
no longer. The oppression of the Darkness uplifted 
itself from my bosom. A dull shock like that of 
electricity pervaded my frame, and was followed 
by total ioss of the idea of contact. All of what 
man has termed sense was merged in the sole con- 
sciousness of entity, and in the one abiding sentiment 
of duration. The mortal body had been at length 
stricken with the hand of the deadly Decay. 

Yet had not all of sentience departed; for the 
consciousness and the sentiment remaining supplied 
some of its functions by a lethargic intuition. I 
appreciated the direful change now in operation 
upon the flesh, and, as the dreamer is sometimes 
aware of the bodily presence of one who leans over 
him, so, sweet Una, I still dully felt that you sat 
by my side. So, too, when the noon of the second 
day came, I was not unconscious of those movements 
which displaced you from my side, which confined 
me within the coffin, which deposited me within the 
hearse, which bore me to the grave, which lowered me 
within it, which heaped heavily the mould upon me, 
and which thus left me, in blackness and corruption, 
to my sad and solemn slumbers with the worm. 

And here, in the prison-house which has few secrets 
to disclose, there rolled away days and weeks and 
months; and the soul watched narrowly each second - 
as it flew, and, without effort, took record of its 
flight—without effort and without object. 

A year passed. The consciousness of being had 
grown hourly more indistinct, and that of mere 
locality had, in great measure, usurped its position. 
The idea of entity was becoming merged in that of 
place. The narrow space immediately surrounding 
what had been the body, was now growing to be the 


28 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


body itself. At length, as often happens to the 
sleeper (by sleep and its world alone is Death imagined 
—at length, as sometimes happened on Earth 
to the deep slumberer, when some flitting light half 
startled him into awaking, yet left him half enveloped 
in dreams—so to me, in the strict embrace of the 
Shadow, came that light which alone might have had 
power to startle—the light of enduring Love. Men 
toiled at the grave in which I lay darkling. They 
upthrew the damp earth. Upon my mouldering 
bones there descended the coffin of Una. | 

And now again all was void. That nebulous light 
had been extinguished. That feeble thrill had 
vibrated itself into quiescence. Many lustra had 
supervened. Dust had returned to dust. The 
worm had food no more. The sense of being had at 
length utterly departed, and there reigned in its © 
stead—instead of all things—dominant and perpetual 
—the autocrats Place and Time. For that which was 
not—for that which had no form—for that which had 
no thought—for that which had no sentience—for 
that which was soulless, yet of which matter formed 
no portion—for all this nothingness, yet for all this 
immortality, the grave was still a home, and the 
corrosive hours, co-mates. 


CONVERSATION OF EIROS-CHARMION 29 


THE 


CONVERSATION OF EIROS AND 
CHARMION 


Ilup cot rpocoirw 
I will bring fire to thee. 
Eurtpides—Androm: 


EIROS 
WHY do you call me Eiros? 


CHARMION 


So henceforward will you always be called. You 
must forget, too, my earthly name, and speak to 
me as Charmion. 


EIROS 
This is indeed no dream! 


CHARMION 


Dreams are with us no more;—but of these mys- 
teries anon. I rejoice to see you looking life-like and 
rational. The film of the shadow has already 
passed from off your eyes. Be of heart, and fear 
nothing. Your allotted days of stupor have expired; 
and, to-morrow, I will myself induct you into the 
full joys and wonders of your novel existence. 


EIROS 


True—I feel no stupor—none at all. The wild 
sickness and the terrible darkness have left me, and 


30 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


I hear no longer that mad, rushing, horrible sound, 
like the ‘‘ voice of many waters.’”’ Yet my senses are 
bewildered, Charmion, with the keenness of their 
perception of the new. 


CHARMION 


A few days will remove all this;—but I fully 
understand you, and feel for you. It is now ten 
earthly years since I underwent what you undergo— 
yet the remembrance of it hangs by me still. You 
have now suffered all of pain, however, which you 
will suffer in Aidenn. 


EIROS 
In Aidenn? 
CHARMION 
In Aidenn, 
EIROS 


Oh God!—pity me, Charmion!—I am overburth- 
ened with the majesty oz all things—of the unknown 
now known—of the speculative Future merged in the 
august and certain Present. 


CHARMION. 


Grapple not now with such thoughts. To- 
morrow we will speak of this. Your mind wavers, 
and its agitation will find relief in the exercise of 
simple memories. Look not around, nor forward— 
but back. JI am burning with anxiety to hear the 
details of that stupendous event which threw you 
among us. Tell me of it. Let us converse of 
familiar things, in the old familiar language of the 
world which has so fearfully perished. 


CONVERSATION OF EIROS-CHARMION 31 


EIROS 


Most fearfully, fearfully!—this is indeed no 
dream. 


CHARMION 


Dreams are no more. Was I much mourned, 
my Eiros? 


EIROS 


Mourned, Charmion?—oh deeply. To that last 
hour of all, there hung a cloud of intense gloom and 
devout sorrow over your household. 


CHARMION 


And that last hour—speak of it. Remember 
that, beyond the naked fact of the catastrophe itself, 
I know nothing. When, coming out from among 
mankind, I passed into Night through the Grave— 
at that period, if I remember aright, the calamity 
which overwhelmed you was utterly unanticipated. 
But, indeed, I knew little of the speculative phi- 
losophy of the day. 


EIROS 


The individual calamity was, as you say, entirely 
unanticipated; but analogous misfortunes had been 
long a subject of discussion with astronomers. I 
need scarce tell you, my friend, that, even when you 
left us, men had agreed to understand those passages 
in the most holy writings which speak of the final 
destructions of all things by fire, as having reference 
to the orb of the earth alone. But in regard to the 
immediate agency of the ruin, speculation had been 
at fault from that epoch in astronomical knowledge 
in which the comets were divested of the terrors 


~— 


32 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


of flame. The very moderate density of these 
bodies had been well established. They had been 
observed to pass among the satellites of Jupiter, 
without bringing about any sensible alteration either 
in the masses or in the orbits of these secondary 
planets. We had long regarded the wanderers as 
vapory creations of inconceivable tenuity, and as 
altogether incapable of doing injury to our sub- 
stantial globe, even in the event of contact. But 
contact was not in any degree dreaded; for the ele- 
ments of all the comets were accurately known. 
That among them we should look for the agency of 
the threatened fiery destruction had been for many 
years considered an inadmissible idea. But wonders 
and wild fancies had been, of late days, strangely 
rife among mankind; and, although it was only with 
a few of the ignorant that actual apprehension 
prevailed, upon the announcement by astronomers 
of a new comet, yet this announcement was generally 
received with I know not what of agitation and 
mistrust. 

The elements of the strange orb were immediately 
calculated, and it was at once conceded by all ob- 
servers, that its path, at perihelion, would bring it 
into very close proximity with the earth. There 
were two or three astronomers, of secondary note, 
who resolutely maintained that a contact was 
inevitable. I cannot very well express to you the 
effect of this intelligence upon the people. For 
a few short days they would not believe an assertion 
which their intellect, so long employed among 
worldly considerations, could not in any manner 
grasp. But the truth of a vitally important fact 
soon makes its way into the understanding of even 
the most stolid. Finally, all men saw that astronom- 
ical knowledge lied not, and they awaited the comet. 


CONVERSATION OF EIROS-CHARMION 33 


Its approach was not, at first, seemingly rapid; 
nor was its appearance of very unusual character. 
It was of a dull red, and had little perceptible train. 
_ For seven or eight days we saw no material increase 
in its apparent diameter, and but a partial alteration 
in its color. Meantime, the ordinary affairs of men 
were discarded, and all interest absorbed in a growing 
discussion, instituted by the philosophic, in respect 
to the cometary nature. Even the grossly ignorant 
aroused their sluggish capacities to such considera- 
tions. The learned now gave their intellect—their 
soul—to no such points as the allaying of fear, or 
to the sustenance of loved theory. They sought— 
they panted for right views. They groaned for 
perfected knowledge. Truth arose in the purity of 
her strength and exceeding majesty, and the wise 
bowed down and adored. 

That material injury to our globe or to its inhabi- 
tants would result from the apprehended contact, 
was an opinion which hourly lost ground among the 
wise; and the wise were now freely permitted to 
rule the reason and the fancy of the crowd. It was 
demonstrated, that the density of the comet’s 
nucleus was far less than that of our rarest gas; 
and the harmless passage of a similar visitor among 
the satellites of Jupiter was a point strongly insisted 
upon, and which served greatly to allay terror. 
Theologists, with an earnestness fear-enkindled, 
dwelt upon the biblical prophecies, and expounded 
them to the people with a directness and simplicity 
of which no previous instance had been known. 
That the final destruction of the earth must be brought 
about by the agency of fire, was urged with a spirit 
that enforced every where conviction; and that the 
comets were of no fiery nature (as all men now 
knew) was a truth which relieved all, in a great 

VoL. V—3 


34 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


measure, from the apprehension of the great calamity 
foretold. Itis noticeable that the popular prejudices 
and vulgar errors in regard to pestilences and wars— 
errors which were wont to prevail upon every 
appearance of a comet—were now altogether un- 
known. As if by some sudden convulsive exertion, 
reason had at once hurled superstition from her 
throne. The feeblest intellect had derived vigor 
from excessive interest. 

What minor evils might arise from the contact 
were points of elaborate question. The learned 
spoke of slight geological disturbances, of probable 
alterations in climate, and consequently in vegeta- 
tion; of possible magnetic and electric influences. 
Many held that no visible or perceptible effect would 
in any manner be produced. While such discus- 
sions were going on, their subject gradually ap- 
proached, growing larger in apparent diameter, 
and of a more brilliant lustre. Mankind grew 
paler as it came. All human operations were 
suspended. 

There was an epoch in the course of the general 
sentiment when the comet had attained, at length, 
a size surpassing that of any previously recorded 
visitation. The people now, dismissing any linger- 
ing hope that the astronomers were wrong, ex- 
perienced all the certainty of evil. The chimerical 
aspect of their terror was gone. The hearts of the 
stoutest of our race beat violently within their 
bosoms. A very few days sufficed, however, to 
merge even such feelings in sentiments more unendur- 
able. Wecould no longer apply to the strange orb 
any accustomed thoughts. Its historical attributes 
had disappeared. It oppressed us with a hideous 
novelty of emotion. We saw it not as an astronomi- 
cal phenomenon in the heavens, but as an incubus 


CONVERSATION OF EIROS-CHARMION — 35s 


upon our hearts, and a shadow upon our brains. It — 
had taken, with inconceivable rapidity, the character 
of a gigantic mantle of rare flame, extending from 
horizon to horizon. 

Yet a day, and men breathed with greater freedom. 
It was clear that we were already within the influence 
of the comet; yet we lived. We even felt an unusual 
elasticity of frame and vivacity of mind. The ex- 
ceeding tenuity of the object of our dread was 
apparent; for all heavenly objects were plainly 
visible through it. Meantime, our vegetation had 
perceptibly altered; and we gained faith, from this 
predicted circumstance, in the foresight of the wise. 
A wild luxuriance of foliage, utterly unknown 
before, burst out upon every vegetable thing. 

Yet another day—and the evil was not altogether 
upon us. It was now evident that its nucleus would 
first reach us. A wild change had come over all 
men; and the first sense of parm was the wild signal 
for general lamentation and horror. This first 
sense of pain lay in a rigorous constriction of the 
breast and lungs, and an insufferable dryness of the 
skin. It could not be denied that our atmosphere 
was radically affected; the conformation of this 
atmosphere and the possible modifications to which 
it might be subjected, were now the topics of discus- 
sion. The result of investigation sert an electric 
thrill of the intensest terror through the universal 
heart of man. 

It had been long known that the air which encircled 
us was a compound of oxygen and nitrogen gases, 
in the proportion of twenty-one measures of oxygen, 
and seventy-nine of nitrogen, in every one hundred 
of the atmosphere. Oxygen, which was the principle 
of combustion, and the vehicle of heat, was absolutely 
necessary to the support of animal life, and was the 


36 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


most powerful and energetic agent in nature. 
Nitrogen, on the contrary, was incapable of support- 
ing either animal life or flame. An unnatural excess 
of oxygen would result, it had been ascertained, in 
just such an elevation of the animal spirits as we 
had latterly experienced. It was the pursuit, the 
extension of the idea, which had engendered awe. 
What would be the result of a total extraction of the 
nitrogen? A combustion irresistible, all-devouring, 
omni-prevalent, immediate;—the entire fulfilment, 
in all their minute and terrible details, of the fiery 
and horror-inspiring denunciations of the prophecies 
of the Holy Book. 

Why need I paint, Charmion, the now disenchained 
frenzy of mankind? That tenuity in the comet 
which had previously inspired us with hope, was 
now the source of the bitterness of despair. In its 
impalpable gaseous charactei1 we clearly perceived 
the consummation of Fate. Meantime a day again 
passed—hearing away with it the last shadow of 
Hope. We gasped in the rapid modification of 
the air. The red blood bounded tumultuously 
through its strict channels. A furious delirium 
possessed all men; and, with arms rigidly outstretched 
towards the threatening heavens, they trembled 
and shrieked aloud. But the nucleus of the destroyer 
was now upon us;—even here in Aidenn, I shudder 
while speak. Let me be brief—brief as the ruin that 
overwhelmed. For a moment there was a wild 
lurid light alone, visiting and penetrating all things. 
Then—let us bow down, Charmion, before the 
excessive majesty of the great God! then, there 
came a shouting and pervading sound, as if from the 
mouth itself of H1m; while the whole incumbent mass 
of ether in which we existed, burst at once into a 
species of intense flame, for whose surpassing 


CONVERSATION OF EITROS-CHARMION | 37 


brilliancy and all-fervid heat even the angels in the 
high Heaven of pure knowledgehavenoname. Thus 
ended all. 


38 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


THE LITERATI 
OF CRITICISM—PUBLIC AND PRIVATE 


[In 1846, Mr. Poe published in The Lady’s Book a series of 
six articles, entitled “The Literati of New-York City,” 
in which he professed to give “some honest opinions at 
random respecting their autorial merits, with occasional 
words of personality.’’ The series was introduced by 
the following paragraphs, and the personal sketches were 
given in the order in which they are here reprinted, 
from “George Bush” to “Richard Adams Locke.” 
The other notices of American and foreign writers, were 
contributed by Mr. Poe to various journals, chiefly in 
the last four or five years of his life.] 


pointing out the distinction between the 

popular “‘opinion”’ of the merits of cotempo- 
rary authors, and that held and expressed of them 
in private literary society. The former species of 
“opinion” can be called ‘‘opinion”’ only by courtesy. 
It is the public’s own, just as we consider a book our 
own when we have bought it. In general, this 
opinion is adopted from the journals of the day, and 
I have endeavored to show that the cases are rare 
indeed in which these journals express any other 
sentiment about books than such as may be at- 
tributed directly or indirectly to the authors of the 
books. The most “‘popular,” the most ‘‘successful’’ 
writers among us, (for a brief period, at least,) are, 
ninety-nine times out of a hundred, persons of mere 
address, perseverance, effrontery—in a word, busy- 
bodies, toadies, quacks. These people easily suc- 


i N acriticism on Bryant I was at some pains in 


THE LITERATI 39 


ceed in boring editors (whose attention is too often 
entirely engrossed by politics or other ‘‘business”’ 
matter) into the admission of favorite notices written 
or caused to be written by interested parties—or, at 
least, into the admission of some notice where, under 
ordinary circumstances, vo notice would be given at 
all. In this way ephemeral ‘‘reputations’”’ are 
manufactured, which, for the most part, serve all the 
purposes designed—that is to say, the putting 
money into the purse of the quack and the quack’s 
publisher; for there never was a quack who could be 
brought to comprehend the value of mere fame. 
Now, men of genius will not resort to these manceu- 
vres, because genius involves in its very essence a 
scorn of chicanery; and thus for a time the quacks 
always get the advantage of them, both in respect to 
pecuniary profit and what appears to be public 
esteem. 

There is another point of view, too. Your literary 
quacks court, in especial, the personal acquaintance 
of those ‘‘connected with the press.”’ Now these 
latter, even when penning a voluntary, that is to say, 
an uninstigated notice of the book of an acquaint- 
ance, feel as if writing not so much for the eye of the 
public as for the eye of the acquaintance, and the 
notice is fashioned accordingly. The bad points of 
the work are slurred over, and the good ones brought 
out into the best light, all this through a feeling akin 
to that which makes it unpleasant to speak ill of one 
to one’s face. In the case of men of genius, editors, 
as a general rule, have no such delicacy—for the 
simple reason that, as a general rule, they have no 
acquaintance with these men of genius, a class pro- 
verbial for shunning society. 

But the very editors who hesitate at saying in 
print an ill word of an author personally known, are 


40 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


usually the most frank in speaking about him 
privately. In literary society, they seem bent upon 
avenging the wrongs self-inflicted upon their own 
consciences. Here, accordingly, the quack is treated 
as he deserves—even a little more harshly than he 
deserves—by way of striking a balance. True 
merit, on the same principle, is apt to be slightly 
overrated; but, upon the whole, there is a close ap- 
proximation to absolute honesty of opinion; and this 
honesty is farther secured by the mere trouble to 
which it puts one in conversation to model one’s 
countenance to a falsehood. We place on paper 
without hesitation a tissue of flatteries, to which in 
society we could not give utterance, for our lives, 
without either blushing or laughing outright. 

For these reasons there exists a very remarkable 
discrepancy between the apparent public opinion of 
any given author’s merits, and the opinion which is 
expressed of him orally by those who are best 
qualified to judge. For example, Mr. Hawthorne, 
the author of “‘Twice-Told Tales,’’ is scarcely recog- 
nised by the press or by the public, and when noticed 
at all, is noticed merely to be damned by faint praise. 
Now, my own opinion of him is, that, although his 
walk is limited, and he is fairly to be charged with 
mannerism, treating all subjects in a similar tone of 
dreamy inuendo, yet in this walk he evinces ex- 
traordinary genius, having no rival either in America 
or elsewhere—and this opinion I have never heard 
gainsaid by any one literary person in the country. 
That this opinion, however, is a spoken and not a 
written one, is referable to the facts, first, that Mr. 
Hawthorne 7s a poor man, and, second, that he zs not 
an ubiquitous quack. 

Again, of Mr. Longfellow, who, although a little 
quacky per se, has, through his social and literary 


OF CRITICISM—PUBLIC AND PRIVATE 41 


position as a man of property and a professor at 
Harvard, a whole legion of active quacks at his con- 
trol—of him what is the apparent popular opinion? 
Of course, that he is a poetical phenomenon, as en- 
tirely without fault, as is the luxurious paper upon 
which his poems are invariably borne to the public 
eye. In private society he is regarded with one 
voice as a poet of far more than usual ability, a 
skilful artist and a well-read man, but as less re- 
markable in either capacity than as a determined 
imitator and a dexterous adapter of the ideas of 
other people. For years I have conversed with no 
literary person who did not entertain precisely these 
ideas of Professor L.; and, in fact, on all literary 
topics, there is in society a seemingly wonderful 
coincidence of opinion. The author accustomed to 
seclusion, and mingling for the first time with those 
who have been associated with him only through 
their works, is astonished and delighted at finding 
common to all whom he meets, conclusions which he 
had blindly fancied were attained by himself alone, 
and in opposition to the judgment of mankind. 

In the series of papers which I now propose, my 
design is, in giving my own unbiased opinion of the 
literatt (male and female) of New York, to give at the 
same time very closely, if not with absolute accuracy, 
that of conversational society in literary circles. It 
must be expected, of course, that, in innumerable 
particulars, I shall differ from the voice, that is to 
say, from what appears to be the voice of the public 
—but this is a matter of no consequence whatever. 

New York literature may be taken as a fair rep- 
resentation of that of the country at large. The 
City itself is the focus of American letters. Its 
authors include, perhaps, one-fourth of all in 
America, and the influence they exert on their 


42 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


brethren, if seemingly silent, is not the less extensive 
and decisive. As I shall have to speak of many in- 
dividuals, my limits will not permit me to speak of 
them otherwise than in brief; but this brevity will be 
merely consistent with the design, which is that of 
simple opinion, with little of either argument or 
detail. With one or two exceptions, I am well ac- 
quainted with every author to be introduced, and I 
shall avail myself of the acquaintance to convey, 
generally, some idea of the personal appearance of 
all who, in this regard, would be likely to interest 
my readers. As any precise order or arrangement 
seems unnecessary and may be inconvenient, I shall 
maintain none. It will be understood that, with- 
out reference to supposed merit or demerit, each 
individual is introduced absolutely at random. 


GEORGE BUSH 43 


GEORGE BUSH 


Hebrew in the University of New York, and 

has long been distinguished for the extent and 
variety of his attainments in oriental literature; in- 
deed, as an oriental linguist, it is probable that he 
has no equal among us. He has published a great 
deal, and his books have always the good fortune to 
attract attention throughout the civilized world. 
His “‘Treatise on the Millenium” is, perhaps, that of 
his earlier compositions by which he is most ex- 
tensively as well as most favorably known. Of late 
days he has created a singular commotion in the realm 
of theology, by his ‘‘ Anastasis, or the Doctrine of the 
Resurrection: in which it is shown that the Doctrine 
of the Resurrection of the Body is not sanctioned by 
Reason or Revelation.’”’ This work has been zeal- 
ously attacked, and as zealously defended by the pro- 
fessor and his friends. There can be no doubt that, 
up to this period, the Bushites have had the best of 
the battle. The ‘‘Anastasis”’ is lucidly, succinctly, 
vigorously, and logically written, and proves, in my 
Opinion, everything that it attempts—provided we 
admit the imaginary axioms from which it starts; 
and this is as much as can be well said of any theo- 
logical disquisition under the sun. It might be hinted, 
too, in reference as well to Professor Bush as to his 
opponents, ‘‘que la plupart des sectes ont ratson dans 
une bonne partie de ce qu’elles avancent, mats non pas 
en ce qwelles nient.” A subsequent work on ‘“‘The 
Soul,” by the author of ‘‘Anastasis,’’ has made 
nearly as much noise as the ‘‘Anastasis’’ itself. 


Te REV. GEORGE BUSH is Professor of 


44 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Taylor, who wrote so ingeniously ‘‘The Natural 
History of Enthusiasm,’’ might have derived many 
a valuable hint from the study of Professor Bush. 
No man is more ardent in his theories; and these 
latter are neither few nor commonplace. He is a 
Mesmerist and a Swedenborgian—has lately been 
engaged in editing Swedenborg’s works, publishing 
them in numbers. He converses with fervor, and 
often with eloquence. Very probably he will 
establish an independent church. 

He is one of the most amiable men in the world, 
universally respected and beloved. His frank, un- 
pretending simplicity of demeanor, is especially 
winning. 

In person he is tall, nearly six feet, and spare, with 
large bones. His countenance expresses rather — 
benevolence and profound earnestness, than high in- 
telligence. The eyes are piercing; the other features, 
in general, massive. The forehead, phrenologically, 
indicates causality and comparison, with deficient 
ideality—the organization which induces strict logi- 
cality from insufficient premises. He walks with a 
slouching gait and with an air of abstraction. His © 
dress is exceedingly plain. In respect to the ar- 
rangement about his study, he has many of the 
Magliabechian habits. He is, perhaps, fifty-five 
years of age, and seems to enjoy good health. 


GEORGE H. COLTON 45 


GEORGE H. COLTON 


R. COLTON is noted as the author of 
M. ‘Tecumseh,’ and as the originator and 
editor of “‘The American Review,” a Whig 
magazine of the higher (that is to say, of the five 
dollar) class. I must not be understood as meaning 
any disrespect to the work. It is, in my opinion, by 
far the best of its order in this country, and is sup- 
ported in the way of contribution by many of the 
very noblest intellects. Mr. Colton, if in nothing 
else, has shown himself a man of genius in his suc- 
cessful establishment of the magazine within so 
brief a period. It is now commencing its second 
year, and I can say, from my own personal knowledge 
that its circulation exceeds two thousand—it is 
probably about two thousand five hundred. So 
marked and immediate a success has never been at- 
tained by any of our five dollar magazines, with the 
exception of ‘‘The Southern Literary Messenger,’’ 
which, in the course of nineteen months, (subsequent 
to the seventh from its commencement,) attained a 
circulation of rather more than five thousand. 

I cannot conscientiously call Mr. Colton a good 
editor, although I think that he will finally be so. 
He improves wonderfully with experience. His 
present defects are timidity and a lurking taint of 
partiality, amounting to positive prejudice (in the 
vulgar sense) for the literature of the Puritans. I 
do not think, however, that he is at all aware of such 
_prepossession. His taste is rather unexceptionable 
than positively good. He has not, perhaps, suffi- 


46 EDGAR ALLAN POB 


cient fire within himself to appreciate it in others. 
Nevertheless, he endeavors to do so, and in this en- 
deavor is not inapt to take opinions at secondhand— 
to adopt, I mean, the opinions of others. He is 
nervous, and a very trifling difficulty disconcerts 
him, without getting the better of a sort of dogged 
perseverance, which will make a thoroughly success- 
ful man of him in the end. He is (classically) well 
educated. 

As a poet he has done better things than 
‘“Tecumseh,’’ in whose length he has committed a 
radical and irreparable error, sufficient in itself to 
destroy a far better book. Some portions of it are 
truly poetical; very many portions belong to a high 
order of eloquence; it is invariably well versified, and 
has no glaring defects, but, upon the whole, is in- 
sufferably tedious. Some of the author’s shorter 
compositions, published anonymously in his maga- 
zine, have afforded indications even of genius. 

Mr. Colton is marked in his personal appearance. 
He is probably not more than thirty, but an air of 
constant thought (with a pair of spectacles) causes 
him to seem somewhat older. He is about five feet 
eight or nine in height, and fairly proportioned— 
neither stout nor thin. His forehead is quite in- 
tellectual. His mouth has a peculiar expression 
difficult to describe. Hair light and generally in 
disorder. He converses fluently, and, upon the 
whole, well, but grandiloquently, and with a tone 
half tragical half pulpital. 

In character he is in the highest degree estimable, 
a most sincere, high-minded, and altogether honor- 
able man. He is unmarried. 


N. P. WILLIS 47 


Nive. WILLIS 


HATEVER may be thought of Mr. 
: Willis’s talents, there can be no doubt 
| about the fact that, both as an author and 
as a man, he has made a good deal of noise in the 
world—at least for an American. His literary life, 
~in especial, Has*been~one’continual émeute; but then 
his literary character is modified or impelled in a 
very remarkable degree by his personal one. His 
success (for in point of fame, if of nothing else, he 
has certainly been successfiil) ig to be attributed, 
one-third to his mental ability and two-thirds to his 
physical temperament—the latter goading him into 
_ the accomplishment of what the former merely gave 
him the means of accomplishing. 

At a very early age Mr. Willis seems to have ar- 
rived at an understanding that, in a republic such 
as ours, the mere man of letters must ever be a cipher, 
and endeavored, accordingly, to unite the éclat of 
the littérateur with that of the man of fashion or of 
society. He ‘‘pushed himself,’ went much into the 
world, made friends with the gentler sex, ‘‘delivered’”’ 
poetical addresses, wrote ‘‘scriptural’’ poems, trav- 
elled, sought the intimacy of noted women, and 
got into quarrels with notorious men. All these 
things served his purpose—if, indeed, I am right in 
supposing that he had any purposeat all. It is quite 


probable that, as before hinted, he acted only in ac---—~ 


pcotdance with his physical temperament; but, be this 
“as it may, his personal gréatly advanced, if it did not 


48 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


altogether establish his literary fame. I have often © 
carefully considered whether, without the physique 
of which I speak, there is that in the absolute morale 
of Mr. Willis which would have earned him reputation © 
as a man of letters, and myconclusion is, that he © 
could not have failed to become noted in some degree 

under almost any circumstances, but that about two- 

thirds (as above stated) of his appreciation by the 

public should be attributed to those adventures 

which grew immediately out of his animal consti- 

tution. 

He received what is usually regarded as a “g00d. 
education’’—that is to say, he graduated at college; 
but his education, in the path he pursued, was worth 
to him, on account of his extraordinary savoir fazre, 
fully twice as much as would have been its value in 
any common case. No man’s knowledge is more 
available, no man has exhibited greater tact in the 
seemingly casual display of his wares. / / With lim, 
at least, a little learning is no dangerous t thing. He 
possessed at one time, I believe, the average quantum 
of American collegiate lore—‘‘a little Latin and less 
Greek,’’ a smattering of physical and metaphysical 
science, and (I should judge) a very little of the 
mathematics—but all this must be considered as | 
mere guess on my part. Mr. Willis speaks French 
with some fluency, and Italian not quite so well.”) 

Within the ordinary range of belles lettres author- 
ship, he has evinced much versatility. If called on 
to designate him by any general literary title, I 
might term him a magazinist—for "his compositions _ 
“which the> magazine demands. “We ‘may view him 
as a paragraphist, an essayist, or rather ‘‘sketcher,”’ 
a tale writer, and a poet. 

In the first capacity he fails. His points, however 





N. P. WILLIS 49 


good when deliberately wrought, are too recherchés 
to be put hurriedly before the public eye. Mr. W. 
has by no means the readiness which the editing a 
newspaper demands.....He.composes (as did Addison, 
-and as do many ofthe most brilliant and seemingly 
dashing writers of the present .day;) with great labor 
and frequent erasure and interlineation. His. MSS., 
~in-this-regard; present’ a very singular appearance, 
and indicate the vacillation which is, perhaps, the 
leading trait of his character. A newspaper, too, in 
its longer articles—its ‘‘leaders’’—very frequently 
demands argumentation, and here Mr...W. is re- 
‘markably out of his element. His exuberant fancy 
leads him over hedge and ditch—anywhere from the 
main road; and, besides, he is far too readily self-dis- 
possessed. With time at command, however, his 
great tact stands him instead of all argumentative 
power, and enables him to overthrow an antagonist 
without permitting the latter to see how he is over- 
thrown. A fine example of this ‘‘management”’ is to 
be found in Mr. W.’s reply to a very inconsiderate at- 
tack upon his social standing, made by one of the 
editors of the New York ‘‘Courier and Inquirer.” 
I have always regarded this reply as the highest 
evidence of its author’s ability, as a masterpiece of 
ingenuity, if not of absolute genius. The skill of the 
whole lay in this—that, without troubling himself to 
refute the charges themselves brought against him 
by Mr. Raymond, he put forth his strength in ren- 
dering them null, to all intents and purposes, by 
‘obliterating, incidentally and without letting his 
design be perceived, ‘all the impression these charges 
were calculated to convey. “But this reply can be 
called a newspaper article only on the ground of its 
having appeared in a newspaper. 
As a writer of ‘‘sketches,’’ properly so called, Mr. 
VoL, V—4 


go EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Willis is unequalled. Sketches—especially of so- 
ciety—are his forte, and they are so for no other 
reason than that they afford him the best opportu- 
nity of introducing the personal Willis—or, more dis- 
tinctly, because this species of composition is most 
susceptible of impression from his personal character. 
The degagé tone of this kind of writing, too, best 
admits and encourages that fancy which Mr. W. 
possesses in the most extraordinary degree; it is in 
fancy that he reigns supreme; this, more than any 
one other quality,and, indeed, more than all his 
other literary qualities combined, has made him 
what he is. Itisthis which gives him the originality, 
the freshness, the point, the piquancy, which appear 
to be the immediate, but which are, in fact, the 
mediate sources of his popularity.* 


*As, by metaphysicians and in ordinary discourse, the word 
fancy is used with very little determinateness of meaning, I 
may be pardoned for repeating here what I have elsewhere said 
on this topic. I shall thus be saved much misapprehension in 
regard to the term—one which will necessarily be often em- 
ployed in the course of this series. 

‘‘Fancy,’’ says the author of ‘‘Aids to Reflection,’”’ (who 
aided reflection to much better purpose in his ‘‘Genevieve’’) 
—‘‘fancy combines—imagination creates’? This was intended 
and has been received as a distinction, but it is a distinction 
without a difference—without a difference even of degree. 
The fancy as nearly creates as the imagination, and neither at 
all. Novel conceptions are merely unusual combinations. 
The mind of man can imagine nothing which does not really 
exist; if it could, it would create not only ideally but sub- 
stantially, as do the thoughts of God. It may be said, ‘‘We 
imagine a griffin, yet a griffin does not exist.’’ Not the 
griffin, certainly, but its component parts. It is no more 
than a collation of known limbs, features, qualities. Thus 
with all which claims to be new, which appears to be a creation 
of the intellect—all is re-soluble into the old. The wildest 
effort of the mind cannot stand the test of this analysis. 

Imagination, fancy, fantasy, and humor, have in common the 
elements combination and novelty. The imagination is the 
artist of the four. From novel arrangements of old forms 
which present themselves to it, it selects such only as are 
harmonious; the result, of course, is beauty itself—using the 
word in its most extended sense and as inclusive of the sublime. 
The pure imagination chooses, from either beauty or deformity 


N. P. WILLIS Br 


In tales (written with deliberation for the maga- 
zines) he has shown greater constructiveness than I 


only the most combinable things hitherto uncombined; the 
compound, as a general rule, partaking in character of sub- 
limity or beauty in the ratio of the respective sublimity or 
beauty of the things combined, which are themselves still to 
be considered as atomic—that is to say, as previous com- 
binations. But, as often analogously happens in physical 
chemistry, so not unfrequently does it occur in this chemistry 
of the intellect, that the admixture of two elements will result 
in a something that shall have nothing of the quality of one of 
them—or even nothing of the qualities of either. The range 
of imagination is thus unlimited. Its materials extend through- 
out the universe. Even out of deformities it fabricates that 
beauty which is at once its sole object and its inevitable test. 
But, in general, the richness of the matters combined, the 
facility of discovering combinable novelties worth combining, 
and the absolute ‘‘chemical combination’’ of the completed mass, 
are the particulars to be regarded in our estimate of imagi- 
nation. It is this thorough harmony of an imaginative work 
which so often causes it to be undervalued by the undis- 
criminating, through the character of obviousness which is 
superinduced. We are apt to find ourselves asking why it ts 
that these combinations have never been 1magined before? 

Now, when this question does not occur, when the harmony 
of the combination is comparatively neglected, and when, in 
addition to the element of novelty, there is introduced the 
sub-element of unexpectedness—when, for example, matters 
are brought into combination which not only have never 
been combined, but whose combination strikes us as a difficulty 
happily overcome, the result then appertains to the fancy, 
and is, to the majority of mankind, more grateful than the 
paccly harmonious one—although, absolutely, it is less 

eautiful (or grand) for the reason that 2¢ 7s less harmonious. 

Carrying its errors into excess—for, however enticing, they 
are errors still, or nature lies—fancy is at length found infringing 
upon the province of fantasy. The votaries of this latter 
delight not only in novelty and unexpectedness of com- 
bination, but in the avoidance of proportion. The result is, 
therefore, abnormal, and, to a healthy mind, affords less of 
“key through its novelty than of pain through its inco- 

erence. When, proceeding a step farther, however, fancy 
seeks not merely disproportionate but incongruous or antag- 
onistic elements, the effect is rendered more pleasurable by its 
ener positiveness, there is a merry effort of truth to shake 
rom her that which is no property of hers, and we laugh 
outright in recognising humor. | 

The four faculties in question seem to me all of their class; 
but when either fancy or humor is expressed to gain an end, 
is pointed at a purpose—whenever either becomes objective 
in place of subjective, then it becomes, also, pure wit or sar- 
casm, just as the purpose is benevolent or malevolent, 


52 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


should have given him credit for had I not read his 
compositions of this order—for in this faculty all his 
other works indicate a singular deficiency. The 
chief charm even of these tales, however, is still 
referable to fancy. 

Asa poet, Mr. Willis is not entitled, I think, to so 


high a rank as he may justly claim through his — 


prose; and this for the reason that, although fancy is 
not inconsistent with any of the demands of those 
classes of prose composition which he has attempted, 
and, indeed, is a vital element of most of them, still 
it is at war (as will be understood from what I have 
said in the foot note) with that purity and perfection 
of beauty which are the soul of the poem proper. I 
wish to be understood as saying this generally of our 
author’s poems. In some instances, seeming to feel 
the truth of my proposition, (that fancy should have 
no place in the loftier poesy,) he has denied it a place, 
as in ‘‘Melanie,’’ and his Scriptural pieces; but, un- 
fortunately, he has been unable to supply the void 
with the true imagination, and these poems con- 
sequently are deficient in vigor, in stamen. The 
Scriptural pieces are quite “‘correct,”’ as the French 
have it, and are much admired by a certain set of 
readers, who judge of a poem, not by its effect on 
themselves, but by the effect which they imagine it 
might have upon themselves were they not unhappily 
soulless, and by the effect which they take it for 
granted it does have upon others. It cannot be 
denied, however, that these pieces are, in general 
tame, or indebted for what force they possess to the 
Scriptural passages of which they are merely para- 
phrastic. I quote what, in my own opinion, and in 
that of nearly all my friends, is really the truest poem 
ever written by Mr. Willis, 


N. P. WILLIS 53 


The shadows lay along Broadway, 
’Twas near the twilight tide, 

And slowly there a lady fair 
Was walking in her pride— 

Alone walked she, yet viewlessly 
Walked spirits at her side. 


\\ 


Peace charmed the street beneath her feek 
And honor charmed the air, 

And all astir looked kind on her 
And called her good as fair— 

For all God ever gave to her 
She kept with chary care. 


She kept with care her beauties rare 
From lovers warm and true, 

For her heart was cold to all but gold, 
And the rich came not to woo. 

Ah, honored well are charms to sell 
When priests the selling do! 


Now, walking there was one more fair— 
A slight girl, lily-pale, 

And she had unseen company 
To make the spirit quail— 

’*Twixt want and scorn she walked forlorn, 
And nothing could avail. 


No mercy now can clear her brow 
For this world’s peace to pray— 

For, as love’s wild prayer dissolved in air, 
Her woman’s heart gave way; 

And the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven 
By man is cursed alway. 


There is about this little poem (evidently written 
in haste and through impulse) a true imagination. 
Its grace, dignity and pathos are impressive, and 
there is more in it of earnestness, of soul, than in 
anything I have seen from the pen of its author. 
His compositions, in general, have-a-tamt-of worldli- 
ness, Of insincerity. ~The identical rhyme in the last 


54 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


stanza is very noticeable, and the whole finale is 
feeble. It would be improved by making the last 
two lines precede the first two of the stanza. 
\ _In.classifying Mr. W.’s writings I did not think it 
worth while to speak of him as a dramatist, because, 
although he has written plays, what.they have of 
merit is altogether in their character of poem. Of 
“his ‘Bianca Visconti” I have little to say;—it de- 
served to fail, and did, although it abounded—in- 
eloquent passages. ‘‘Tortesa’’ abounded in the same, 
but had a great many dramatic poznts well calculated 
to tell with a conventional audience. Its-characters, 
with the exception of Tomaso, a drunken buffoon, 
had no character at all, and the plot was a-tissue of 
absurdities, inconsequences and inconsistencies; yet 
I cannot help thinking it; upon the ni UH ‘the Best 
_play ev ever written by an? American. ne , 

‘Mr. Willis has made very few attempts sy criticism, 
and those few (chiefly newspaper articles) have not 
impressed me with a high | idea of his analytic abilities, 
although with a very high idea of his taste and-dis- 
crimination. 

His style proper may be called extravagant, 
_ bizarre, pointed, epigrammatic without being an- 
~tithetical, (this is very rarely the case,) but, through 
all its whimsicalities, graceful, classic and accurate. 
He is very seldom to be caught tripping in the 
minor morals. His English is correct; his most out- 
_-TFageous imagery is, at all events, unmixed.” 

Mr. Willis’s career has naturally made him 
enemies among the envious host of dunces whom he 
has outstripped in the race for fame; and these his 
personal manner (a little tinctured with reserve, 
brusquerte, or even haughtiness) is by no means 
adapted to conciliate. He has innumerable warm 
friends, however, and is himself a warm friend. He 


TI BK 


N. P. WILLIS 55 


is impulsive, generous, bold, impetuous, vacillating, 
irregularly energetic—apt to be hurried into error, 
but incapable of deliberate wrong. 

He is yet young, and, without being, handsome, 
in the ordinary sense, is a remarkably well looking 
man. In height he is, perhaps, five feet eleven, and 
justly proportioned. His figure is put in the best 
light by the ease and assured grace of his carriage. 
His whole person and personal demeanor bear about 
them ;the traces of ‘‘good: society.’ His face 1s 
somewhat too full, or rather heavy, in its lower por- 
tions. Neither his nose nor his forehead can be 
defended; the latter would puzzle phrenology. His 
eyes are a dull bluish gray, and small. His hair is of 
a rich brown, curling naturally and luxuriantly. 
His mouth is well cut; the teeth fine; the expression 
of the smile intellectual and winning. He con- 
verses little, well rather than fluently, and in a sub- 
dued tone. The portrait of him published about 
three years ago in ‘‘Graham’s Magazine,” conveys 
by no means so true an idea of the man as does the 
sketch (by Lawrence) inserted as frontispiece to a 
late collection of his poems. 


50 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


WILLIAM M. GILLESPIE 


R. WILLIAM M. GILLESPIE aided Mr. 
M Park Benjamin, I believe, some years ago, 
in the editorial conduct of ‘‘The New 
World,’”’ and has been otherwise connected with the 
periodical press of New York. He is more favorably 
known, however, as the author of a neat volume en- 
titled ‘‘Rome as Seen by a New Yorker,’’—a good 
title to a good book. The endeavor to convey Rome 
only by those impressions which would naturally be 
made upon an American, gives the work a certain 
air of originality—the rarest of all qualities in de- 
scriptions of the Eternal City. The style is pure and 
sparkling, although occasionally flippant and dil- 
letantesque. ‘The love of remark is much in the usual 
way—selom les régles—never very exceptionable, 
and never very profound. 

Mr. Gillespie is not unaccomplished, converses 
readily on many topics, has some knowledge of 
Italian, French, and, I believe, of the classical 
tongues, with such proficiency in the mathematics 
as has obtained for him a professorship of civil 
engineering at Union College, Schenectady. 

In character he has much general amiability, is 
warm-hearted, excitable, nervous. His address is 
somewhat awkward, but ‘“‘insinuating” from its 
warmth and vivacity. Speaks continuously and 
rapidly, with a lisp which, at times, is by no means 
unpleasing; is fidgety, and never knows how to sit 
or to stand, or what to do with his hands and feet or 
his hat. In the street walks irregularly, mutters to 


WILLIAM L. GILLESPIE 57 


himself, and, in general, appears in a state of pro- 
found abstraction. 

In person he is about five feet seven inches high, 
neither stout nor thin, angularly proportioned; eyes 
large and dark hazel, hair dark and curling, an ill- 
formed nose, fine teeth, and a smile of peculiar sweet- 
ness; nothing remarkable about the forehead. The 
general expression of the countenance when in re- 
pose is rather unprepossessing, but animation very 
much alters its character. He is probably thirty 
years of age—unmarried. 


58 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


CHARLES F. BRIGGS 


R. BRIGGS is better known as Harry 
M Franco, a nom de plume assumed since the 
publication, in the ‘‘Knickerbocker Maga- 
zine,” of his series of papers called ‘‘Adventures of 
Harry Franco.” He also wrote for ‘‘The Knicker- 
bocker’”’ some articles entitled ‘‘The Haunted Mer- 
chant,’’ which have been printed since as a novel, 
and from time to time subsequently has been a con- 
tributor to that journal. The two productions just 
mentioned have some merit. They depend for their 
effect upon the relation in a straightforward manner, — 
just as one would talk, of the most commonplace 
events—a kind of writing which, to ordinary, and 
especially to indolent intellects, has a very observa- 
ble charm. To cultivated or to active minds it is in 
an equal degree distasteful, even when claiming the 
merit of originality. Mr. Briggs’s manner, however, 
is an obvious imitation of Smollett, and, as usual 
with all imitation, produces an unfavorable impres- 
sion upon those. conversant with the original. It is 
a common failing, also, with imitators, to out-Herod 
Herod in aping the peculiarities of the model, and 
too frequently the faults are more pertinaciously ex- 
aggerated than the merits. Thus, the author of 
‘‘Harry Franco” carries the simplicity of Smollett 
sometimes to insipidity, and his picturesque low-life 
is made to degenerate into sheer vulgarity. 
If Mr. Briggs has a forte, it is a Flemish fidelity 
that omits nothing, whether agreeable or disagree- 
able; but I cannot call this forte a virtue. He has 


CHARLES F. BRIGGS 59 


also some humor, but nothing of an original char- 
acter. Occasionally he has written good things. A 
magazine article, called ‘‘Dobbs and his Cantelope,”’ 
was quite easy and clever in its way; but the way is 
necessarily a small one. And I ought not to pase 
over without some allusion to it, his satirical novel 
of ‘“Tom Pepper.’”’ Asa novel, it really has not the 
slightest pretensions. To a genuine artist in litera- 
ture, he is as Plumbe to Sully. Plumbe’s daguerreo- 
types have more fidelity than any portrait ever put 
on canvas, and so Briggs’s sketches of E. A. Duyck- 
inck (Tibbings) and the author of Puffer Hopkins 
(Ferocious) are as lifelike as any portraits in words 
that have ever been drawn. But the subjects are 
little and mean, pretending and vulgar. Mr. Briggs 
would not succeed in delineatinga gentleman. And 
some letters of his in Hiram Fuller’s paper—perhaps 
for the reason that they run through a desert of 
stupidity—some letters of his, I say, under the apt 
signature of ‘‘Ferdinand Mendoza Pinto,” are de- 
cidedly clever as examples of caricature—absurd, of 
course, but sharply absurd, so that, with a knowl- 
edge of their design, one could hardly avoid occa- 
sional laughter. I once thought Mr.Briggs could 
cause laughter only by his efforts at a serious kind 
of writing. 

In connexion with Mr. John Bisco, he was the orig- 
inator of the late ‘‘Broadway Journal”—my edi- 
torial association with that work not having com- 
menced until the sixth or seventh number, although 
I wrote for it occasionally from the first. Among 
the principal papers contributed by Mr. B., were 
those discussing the paintings at the preceding ex- 
hibition of the Academy of Fine Arts in New York. 
I may be permitted to say, that there was scarcely 
a point in his whole series of criticisms on this sub- 


60 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


ject at which I did not radically disagree with him. 
Whatever taste he has in art is, like his taste in 
letters, Flemish. There is a portrait painter for 
whom he has an unlimited admiration. The unfortu- 
nate gentleman is Mr. Page. 

Mr. Briggs is about five feet six inches in height, 
somewhat slightly framed, with a sharp, thin face, 
narrow forehead, nose sufficiently prominent, mouth 
rather pleasant in expression, eyes not so good, gray 
and small, although occasionally brilliant. In dress 
he is apt to affect the artist, felicitating himself es- 
pecially upon his personal acquaintance with artists 
and his general connoisseurship. He walks with a 
quick, nervous step. His address is quite good, 
frank and insinuating. His conversation has now 
and then the merit of humor, and more frequently 
of a smartness, allied to wit, but he has a perfect — 
mania for contradiction, and it is sometimes’ im- 
possible to utter an uninterrupted sentence in his 
hearing. He has much warmth of feeling, and is not 
a person to be disliked, although very apt to irritate 
and annoy. Two of his most marked characteristics 
are vacillation of purpose and a passion for being 
mysterious. He has, apparently, travelled; has 
some knowledge of French; has been engaged in a 
variety of employments; and now, I believe, occupies 
a lawyer’s office in Nassau-street. He is from Cape 
Cod or Nantucket, is married, and is the centre of 
a little circle of rather intellectual people, of which 
the Kirklands, Lowell, and some other notabilities 
are honorary members. He goes little into general 
society, and seems about forty years of age. 


WILLIAM KIRKLAND 61 


WILLIAM KIRKLAND 


R. WILLIAM KIRKLAND—husband 
M of the author of ‘‘A New Home’’—has 

written much for the magazines, but has 
made no collection of his works. A series of ‘‘ Letters 
from Abroad”’ have been among his most popular com- 
positions. He was in Europe for some time, and is 
well acquainted with the French language and 
literature, as also with the German. He aided Dr. 
Turner in the late translation of Von Raumer’s 
_ “America,” published by the Langleys. One of his 
best magazine papers appeared in ‘‘The Columbian”’ 
—a review of the London Foreign Quarterly for 
April, 1844. The arrogance, ignorance, and self- 
glorification of the Quarterly, with its gross in- 
justice towards everything un-British, were severely 
and palpably exposed, and its narrow malignity 
shown to be especially mal-d-propos in a journal ex- 
clusively devoted to foreign concerns, and there- 
fore presumably imbued with something of a cosmo- 
politan spirit. An article on ‘‘English and American 
Monthlies’”’ in Godey’s Magazine, and one entitled 
“‘Our English Visitors,’ in ‘‘The Columbian,” have 
also been extensively read and admired. A valuable 
essay on ‘‘The Tyranny of Public Opinion in the 
United States,’ (published in ‘‘The Columbian” 
for December, 1845), demonstrates the truth of 
Jefferson’s assertion, that in this country, which has 
set the world an example of physical liberty, the in- 
quisition of popular sentiment overrules in practice 
the freedom asserted in theory by the laws. ‘The 


62 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


West, the Paradise of the Poor,” and ‘‘The United 
States’ Census for 1830,’ the former in ‘‘The Demo- 
cratic Review,” the latter in ‘‘Hunt’s: Merchants’ 
Magazine,’ with sundry essays in the daily papers, 
complete the list of Mr. Kirkland’s works. It will be 
seen that he has written little, but that little is en- 
titled to respect for its simplicity, and the evidence 
which it affords of scholarship and diligent research. 
Whatever Mr. Kirkland does is done carefully. He 
is occasionally very caustic, but seldom without 
cause. His style is vigorous, precise, and, notwith- 
standing his foreign acquirements, free from idio- 
matic peculiarities. 

Mr. Kirkland is beloved by all who know him; in 
character mild, unassuming, benevolent, yet not 
without becoming energy at times; in person rather 
short and slight; features indistinctive; converses well © 
and zealously, although his hearing is defective. 


JOHN W. FRANCIS 63 


JOHN W. FRANCIS 


litterateur, cannot well be omitted in an 

account of the New York Il:teratt. In his 
capacity of physician and medical lecturer, he is far 
too well known to need comment. He was the 
pupil, friend and partner of Hossack—the pupil of 
Abernethy—connected in some manner with every- 
thing that has been well said or done medicinally in 
America. Asa medical essayist he has always com- 
manded the highest respect and attention. Among 
the points he has made at various times, 1 may 
mention his Anatomy of Drunkenness, his views of 
the Asiatic Cholera, his analysis of the Avon waters 
of the state, his establishment of the comparative 
immunity of the constitution from a second attack 
of yellow fever, and his pathological propositions 
on the charges wrought in the system by specific 
poisons through their assimilation— propositions 
remarkably sustained and enforced by recent dis- 
coveries of Liebig. 

In unprofessional letters Doctor Francis has also 
accomplished much, although necessarily in a dis- 
cursive manner. His biography of Chancellor Liv- 
ingston, his Horticultural Discourse, his Discourse 
at the opening of the new hall of the New York 
Lyceum of Natural History, are (each in its way) 
models of fine writing just sufficiently toned down 
by an indomitable common sense. I had nearly for- 
gotten to mention his admirable sketch of the per- 
sonal associations of Bishop Berkley, of Newport. 


] ) i FRANCIS although by no means a 


64 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Doctor Francis is one of the old spirits of the New 
York Historical Society. His philanthropy, his 
active, untiring beneficence, will for ever render his 
name a kousehold word among the truly Christian of 
heart. His professional services and his purse are al- 
ways at the command of the needy; few of our 
wealthiest men have ever contributed to the relief 
of distress so bountifully—none certainly with greater 
readiness or with warmer sympathy. 

His person and manner are richly peculiar. He is 
short and stout, probably five feet eight in height, 
limbs of great muscularity and strength, the whole 
frame indicating prodigious vitality and energy—the 
latter is, in fact, the leading trait in his character. 
His head is large, massive—the features in keeping; - 
complexion dark florid; eyes piercingly bright; 
mouth exceedingly mobile and expressive; hair gray, 
and worn in matted locks about the neck and 
shoulders—eyebrows to correspond, jagged and pon- 
derous. His age is about fifty-eight. His general 
appearance is such as to arrest attention. 

His address is the most genial that can be con- 
ceived, its bonhommie irresistible. He speaks in a 
loud, clear, hearty tone, dogmatically, with his head 
thrown back and his chest out; never waits for an in- 
troduction to anybody; slaps a perfect stranger on 
the back and calls him ‘‘Doctor” or ‘‘Learned 
Theban’’; pats every lady on the head, and (if she 
be pretty and petite) designates her by some such 
title as ‘‘My Pocket Edition of the Lives of the 
Saints.” His conversation proper is a sort of 
Roman punch made up of tragedy, comedy, and the 
broadest of all possible farce. He has a natural, 
felicitous flow of talk, always overswelling its bounda- 
ries and sweeping everything before it right and 
left. He is very earnest, intense, emphatic; thumps 


JOHN W. FRANCIS 65 
the table with his fist; shocks the nerves of the ladies. 
His forte, after all, is humor, the richest conceivable— 
a compound of Swift, Rabelais, and the clown in the 
pantomime. He is married. 


vb EDGAR ALLAN POE 


ANNA CORA MOWATT 


RS. MOWATT is in some respects a re- 
M markable woman, and has undoubtedly 

wrought a deeper impression upon the 
public than any-one.of her sex.in-America. 

‘She became first known through*her recitations. 
To these she drew large and discriminating audiences 
in Boston, New York, and elsewhere to the north and 
east. Her subjects were much in the usual way of 
these exhibitions, including comic as well as serious 
pieces, chiefly in verse. In her selections she evinced 
no very refined taste, but was probably influenced by © 
the elocutionary rather than by the literary value of 
her programmes. She read well; her voice was melodi- 
ous; her youth and general appearance excited in- 
terest, but, upon the whole, she produced no great 
effect, and the enterprise may be termed unsuccess- 
ful, although the press, as is its wont, spoke in the 
most sonorous tone of her success. 

It was during these recitations that her name, pre- 
fixed to occasional tales, sketches and brief poems in 
the magazines, first attracted an attention that, but 
for the recitations, it might not have attracted. 

Her sketches and tales may be said to be shad 
written. They are-lively,easy;-conventional,-scin 
“tillating with a species of sarcastic wit, which cright 
be termed. good were it in any respect-original:~ In 
point of style—that is to say, of mere English, they 
are-very-respectable. One of the best-of her prose 
papers is entitled ‘‘Ennui and its Antidote,” pub- 
lished in ‘“‘The Columbian Magazine” for June, 


ANNA CORA MOWATT 67 


1845. The subject, however, is an exceedingly 
hackneyed one. 

In looking carefully over her poems, I find no one 
entitled to commendation as a whole; in very few 
of them do I observe even noticeable passages, and I 
confess that I am surprised and disappointed at this 
result of my inquiry; nor can I make up my mind that 
there is not much latent poetical power in Mrs. 
Mowatt. From some lines addressed to Isabel 
M , [copy the opening stanza as the most favor- 
able specimen which I have seen of her verse. 





Forever vanished from thy cheek 
Is life’s unfolding rose— 

Forever quenched the flashing smile 
That conscious beauty knows! 

Thine orbs are lustrous with a light 
Which ne’er illumes the eye 

Till heaven is bursting on the sight 
And earth is fleeting by. 


In this there is much force, and the idea in the con- 
cluding quatrain is so well put as to have the air of 
originality. Indeed, I am not sure that the thought 
of the last two lines is not original;—at_all events 
it is exceedingly ..vatural.and impressive. I say 
“natural,” because, in any imagined ascent from the 
orb we inhabit, when heaven should ‘‘burst on the 
sight’”—in other words, when the attraction of the 
planet should be superseded by that of another 
sphere, then instantly would the ‘‘earth” have the 
appearance of ‘‘fleeting by.’”’” The versification, also, 
is much better here than is usual with the poetess. 

_In general she is rough, through excess of harsh con- 

~ 8 ole poem is-of higher merit than 
any which I can find with her name attached; but 
there is little of the spirit of poesy in anything she 
writes. She evinces more feeling than ideality. 


68 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Her first decided success was with her comedy, 
‘‘Fashion,” although much of this success itself is 
referable to the interest felt in her as a beautiful 
woman and an authoress. 

The play is not without merit. It may be com- 
mended especially for its simplicity of plot. What 
the Spanish playwrights mean by dramas of 1n- 
trigue, are the worst acting dramas in the world; the 
intellect of an audience can never safely be fatigued 
by complexity. The necessity for verbose explana- 
tion, however,.on the part of Trueman, at the close 


of the play, is in this regard.a-serious defect. A 


dénouement should in all cases be taken up with — 
action—with nothing else. Whatever~cannot be 
explained by such action should be communicated at 
the opening of the story. 

In the plot, however estimable-for simplicity, 
there is of course not a particle of originality of in- 
vention. Had it, indeed, been designéd-as a bur- 
lesque upon the arrant conventionality of stage in- 
cidents in general, it might have been received as a 
palpable hit. There is not an event,-a.character, a 
jest, which is not a well-understood thing, a matter 
of course, a stage-property time out of mind. The © 
general tone is adopted from ‘‘The School for _ 
scandal,’ to which, indeed, the whole composition 
bears just such an affinity.as.the-shell.ofalocust—to 
the locust that tenants it—as the spectrum of a Con- 
eréve rocket to.the-Congreve rocket itself. In the 
management of her imitation, nevertheless, Mrs. Mo- 
watt has, I think, evinced a sense of theatrical effect 
or point which may lead her, at no very distant day, 
to compose an exceedingly taking, although it can 
never much aid her in composing a very meritorious 
drama. ‘‘Fashion,” in a word, owes what it had of 
success to its being the work of a lovely woman who 


ANNA CORA MOWATT 69 


had already excited interest, and to the very com- 
—monplaceness or spirit of conventionality which 
rendered it readily comprehensible and appreciable 
by the public proper. It was much indebted, too, 
to the carpets, the ottomans, the chandeliers and the 
conservatories, which gained so decided a popularity 
for that despicable mass of inanity, the ‘‘London 
Assurance” of Bourcicault. 

Since ‘‘Fashion,” Mrs. Mowatt has published one | 
or two brief novels in pamphlet form, but they have 
no particular merit, although they afford glimpses 

—(L_ cannot. help.thinking)--of--a»-genius as -yet.un- 
revealed, except in her capacity of actress. 

In this capacity, if she be but true to herself, she 
will assuredly win a very enviable distinction. She 
has done well, wonderfully well, both in tragedy and 
comedy; but if she knew her own strength, she would 
confine herself nearly altogether to the depicting (in 
letters not less than on the stage) the more gentle 
sentiments and the most profound passions. Her 
sympathy with the latter is evidently intense. In 
the utterance of the truly generous, of the really 
noble, of the unaffectedly passionate, we see her 
bosom heave, her cheek grow pale, her limbs tremble, 
her lip quiver, and nature’s own tear rush impetu- 
ously to the eye. It is this freshness of the heart 
which will provide for her the greenest laurels. It is 
this enthusiasm, this well of deep feeling, which 
should be made to prove for her an inexhaustible 
source of fame. As an actress, it is to her a mine of 
wealth worth all the dawdling ¢nstruction in the 
world. Mrs. Mowatt, on her first appearance 
as Pauline, was quite as able to give lessons in stage 
routine to any actor or actress in America, as was 
any actor or actress to give lessons to her. Now, at 
least, she should throw all ‘‘support”’ to the winds, 


70 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


trust proudly to her own sense of art, her own rich 
and natural elocution, her beauty, which is unusual, 
her grace, which is queenly, and be assured that these 
qualities, as she now possesses them, are all sufficient 
to render her a great actress, when considered simply 
as the means by which the end of natural acting is to 
be attained, as the mere instruments by which she 
may effectively and unimpededly lay bare to the 
audience the movements of her own passionate heart. 

Indeed, the great charm of her manner is its 
naturalness. She looks, speaks, and moves, with a 
well-controlled impulsiveness, as different as can be 
conceived from the custumary rant and cant, the 
hack conventionality of the stage. Her voice is 
rich and voluminous, and although by no means 
powerful, is so well managed as to seem so. Her 
utterance is singularly distinct, its sole blemish being | 
an occasional Anglicism of accent, adopted probably 
from her instructor, Mr. Crisp. Her reading could 
scarcely be improved. Her action is distinguished 
by an ease and self-possession which would do credit 
to a veteran. Her step is the perfection of grace. 
Often have I watched her for hours with the closest 
scrutiny, yet never for an instant did I observe her 
in an attitude of the least awkwardness or even con- 
straint, while many of her seemingly impulsive ges- 
tures spoke in loud terms of the woman of genius, 
of the poet imbued with the profoundest sentiment 
of the beautiful in motion. 

Her figure is slight, even fragile. Her face is a 
remarkably fine one, and of that precise character 
best adapted to the stage. The forehead is, perhaps, 
the least prepossessing feature, although it is by no 
means an unintellectual one. Hair light auburn, 
in rich profusion, and always arranged with ex- 
quisite taste. The eyes are gray, brilliant and ex- 





ANNA CORA MOWATT ot 


pressive, without being full. The nose is well 
formed, with the Roman curve, and indicative of 
energy. This quality is also shown in the somewhat 
excessive prominence of the chin. The mouth is 
large, with brilliant and even teeth and flexible lips, 
capable of the most instantaneous and effective 
variations of expression. A more radiantly beauti- 
ful smile it is quite impossible to conceive. 


42 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


GEORGE B. CHEEVER 


created at one time something of an excite- 

ment by the publication of a little brochure en- 
titled ‘‘ Deacon Giles’ Distillery.’”’ Heis much better 
known, however, as the editor of ‘*The Commonplace 
Book of American Poetry,’’ a work which has at least 
the merit of not belying its title, and 7s exceedingly 
commonplace. Iam ashamed to say that for several 
years this compilation afforded to Europeans the 
only material from which it was possible to form an 
estimate of the poetical ability of Americans. ‘The 
selections appear to me exceedingly injudicious, and 
have all a marked leaning to the didactic. Dr. 
Cheever is not without a certain sort of negative 
ability as critic, but works of this character should be 
undertaken by poets or not at all. ‘The verses which 
I have seen attributed to him are undeniably 
médtocres. 

His principal publications, in addition to those 
mentioned above, are ‘‘God’s Hand in America,” 
“Wanderings of a Pilgrim under the Shadow of 
Mont Blanc,” *‘Wanderings of a Pilgrim under the 
Shadow of Jungfrau,’’ and, lately, a ‘‘Defence of 
Capital Punishment.’”’ This ‘‘Defence” is at many 
points well reasoned, and as a clear resumé of all 
that has been already said on its own side of the 
question, may be considered as commendable. Its 
premises, however, (as well as those of all reasoners 
pro or con on this vexed topic), are admitted only 
very partially by the world at large—-a fact of which 


T= REVEREND GEORGE B. CHEEVER 


GEORGE B. CHEEVER 7a 


the author affects to be ignorant. Neither does he 
make the slightest attempt at bringing forward one 
novel argument. Any man of ordinary invention 
might have adduced and maintained a dozen. 

The two series of “‘Wanderings” are, perhaps, the 
best works of their writer. They are what is 
called ‘‘eloquent’’; a little too much in that way, 
perhaps, but nevertheless entertaining. 

Dr. Cheever is rather small in stature, and his 
countenance is vivacious; in other respects, there is 
nothing very observable about his personal ap- 
pearance. He has been recently married. 


44 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


CHARLES ANTHON 


known Jay-Professor of the Greek and 
Latin languages in Columbia College, New 
York and Rector of the Grammar School. If not 
absolutely the best he is at least generally considered 
the best classicist in America. In England, and in 
Europe at large, his scholastic acquirements are more 
sincerely respected than those of any of our country- 
men. His additions to Lempriére are there justly 
regarded as evincing a nice perception of method, 
and accurate as well as extensive erudition, but his 
‘‘Classical Dictionary” has superseded the work of 
the Frenchman altogether. Most of Professor 
Anthon’s publications have been adopted as text- 
books at Oxford and Cambridge—an honor to be 
properly understood only by those acquainted with 
the many high requisites for attaining it. Asa com- 
mentator (if not exactly as a critic) he may rank 
with any of his day, and has evinced powers very 
unusual in men who devote their lives to classical 
lore. Huis accuracy is very remarkable; in this partic- 
ilar he is always to be relied upon. The trait 
manifests itself even in his MS., which is a model of 
neatness and symmetry, exceeding in these respects 
anything of the kind with which I am acquainted. 
It is somewhat too neat, perhaps, and too regular, as 
well as diminutive, to be called beautiful; it might 
be mistaken at any time, however, for very elaborate 
copperplate engraving. 
But his chirography, although fully in keeping, 


Dex CHARLES ANTHON is the well- 


CHARLES ANTHON ns 


so far as precision is concerned, with his mental 
character, is, in its entire freedom from flourish or 
superfluity, as much out of keeping with his verbal 
style. In his notes to the Classics he ‘is singularly 
Ciceronian—if, indeed, not positively Johnsonese. 
An attempt was made not long ago to prepossess 
the public against his ‘‘Classical Dictionary,’ the 
most important of his works, by getting up a hue 
and cry of plagiarism—in the case of all similar books 
the most preposterous accusation in the world, al- 
though, from its very preposterousness, one not 
easily rebutted. Obviously, the design in any such 
compilation is, in the first place, to make a useful 
school-book or book of reference, and the scholar who 
should be weak enough to neglect this indispensable 
point for the mere purpose of winning credit with a 
few bookish men for originality, would deserve to be 
dubbed, by the public at least, a dunce. There are 
very few points of classical scholarship which are not 
the common property of ‘‘the learned”’ throughout 
the world, and in composing any book of reference 
recourse is unscrupulously and even necessarily had 
“in all cases to similar books which have preceded. 
In availing themselves of these latter, however, it is 
the practice of quacks to paraphrase page after 
page, rearranging the order of paragraphs, making 
a slight alteration in point of fact here and there, but 
preserving the spirit of the whole, its information, 
erudition, etc., etc., while everything is so completely 
re-written as to leave no room for a direct charge of 
plagiarism; and this is considered and lauded as 
originality. Now, he who, in availing himself of the 
labors of his predecessors (and it is clear that all 
scholars must avail themselves of such labors)—he 
who shall copy verbatim the passages to be desired, 
without attempt at palming off their spirit as 


76 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


original with himself, is certainly no plagiarist, even 
if he fail to make direct acknowledgment of indebted- 
ness—is unquestionably less of the plagiarist than 
the disingenuous and contemptible quack who 
wriggles himself, as above explained, into a reputa- 
tion for originality, a reputation quite out of place 
in a case of this kind—the public, of course, never 
caring a straw whether he be original or not. These 
attacks upon the New York professor are to be at- 
tributed to a clique of pedants in and about Boston, 
gentlemen envious of his success, and whose own 
complications are noticeable only for the singular 
patience and ingenuity with which their dovetailing 
to chicanery is concealed from the public eye. 

Doctor Anthon is, perhaps, forty-eight years of age; 
about five feet: eight inches in height; rather stout; 
fair complexion; hair light and inclined to curl; 
forehead remarkably broad and high; eye gray, clear 
and penetrating; mouth well-formed, with excellent 
teeth—the lips having great flexibility, and conse- 
quent power of expression; the smile particularly 
pleasing. His address in general is bold, frank, 
cordial, full of bonhommie. His whole air is dis-— 
tingué in the best understanding of the term—that — 
is to say, he would impress any one at first sight with 
the idea of his being no ordinary man. He has 
qualities, indeed, which would have insured him 
eminent success in almost any pursuit; and there are 
times in which his friends are half disposed to regret 
his exclusive devotion to classical literature. He 
was one of the originators of the late ‘‘New York 
Review,” his associates in the conduct and pro- 
prietorship being Doctor F. L. Hawks and Professor 
R. C. Henry. By far the most valuable papers, 
however, were those of Doctor A. 





RALPH HOYT Hy 


RALPH HOYT 


chiefly—at least to the world of letters— 

by “‘The Chaunt of Life and other Poems, 
with Sketches and Essays.’’ The publication of 
this work, however, was never completed, only a por- 
tion of the poems having appeared, and none of the 
essays or sketches. It is hoped that we shall yet 
have these latter. 

Of the poems issued, one, entitled ‘‘Old,” had so 
many peculiar excellences that I copied the whole 
of it, although quite long, in ‘‘The Broadway 
Journal.”’ It will remind every reader of Durand’s 
fine picture, ‘‘An Old Man’s Recollections,” although 
between poem and painting there is no more than a 
very admissible similarity. 

I quote a stanza from ‘‘Old”’ (the opening one) by 
way of bringing the piece to the remembrance of any 
who may have forgotten it. 


Ts REVEREND RALPH HOYT is known 


By the wayside, on a mossy stone, 
Sat a hoary pilgrim sadly musing; 
Oft I marked him sitting there alone, 
All the landscape like a page perusing; 
Poor unknown, 
By the way side on a mossy stone. 


The quaintness aimed at here is, so far as a single 
stanza is concerned, to be defended as a legitimate 
effect, conferring high pleasure on a numerous and 
cultivated class of minds. Mr. Hoyt, however, in his 
continuous and uniform repetition of the first line 
in the last of each stanza of twenty-five, has by 
much exceeded the proper limits of the quaint and 


78 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


impinged upon the ludicrous. The poem, neverthe- 
less, abounds in lofty merit, and has, in especial, 
some passages of rich imagination and exquisite 
pathos. For example— 
Seemed it pitiful he should sit there, 
No one sympathizing, no one heeding, 
None to love him for his thin gray hatr. 
One sweet spirit broke the silent spell— 
Ah, to me her name was always Heaven! 
She besought him all his grief to tell— 
(I was then thirteen and she eleven) 
Isabel! 
One sweet spirit broke the silent spell. 


* Angel,’’ said he, sadly, “I am old; 
Earthly hope no longer hath a morrow: 
Why I sit here thou shalt soon be told’”’-— 
(Then his eye betrayed a pearl of sorrow—= 
Down it rolled—) 
*“‘ Angel,’’ said he, sadly, “J am old!”’ 


It must be confessed that some portions of ‘*Old” 
(which is by far the best of the collection) remind us 
forcibly of the ‘‘Old Man” of Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

‘‘Préemus”’ is the concluding poem of the volume, 
and itself concludes with an exceedingly vigorous 
stanza, putting me not a little in mind of Campbell 
in his best days. 

“O’er all the silent sky 
A dark and scowling frown— 
But darker scowled each eye 
When all resolved to die— 
When (night of dread renown!) 
A thousand stars went down.” 

Mr. Hoyt is about forty years of age, of the medium 
height, pale complexion, dark hair and eyes. His 
countenance expresses sensibility and benevolence. 
He converses slowly and with perfect deliberation. 
He is married. 


GULIAN C. VERPLANCK 79 


GULIAN C. VERPLANCK 


R. VERPLANCK has acquired reputa- 
M tion—at least his literary reputation—less 
trom what he has done than from what he 
has given indication of ability todo. His bestifnot his 
principal works, have been addresses, orations and 
contributions to the reviews. His scholarship is 
more than respectable, and his taste and acumen are 
not to be disputed. 

His legal acquirements, it is admitted, are very 
considerable.. When in Congress he was noted as the 
most industrious man in that assembly, and acted as 
a walking register or volume of reference, ever at the 
service of that class of legislators who are too lofty- 
minded to burden their memories with mere business 
particulars or matters of fact. Of late years the 
energy of his character appears to have abated, and 
many of his friends go so far as to accuse him of 
indolence. 

His family is quite influential—one of the few old 
Dutch ones retaining their social position. 

Mr. Verplanck is short in stature, not more than 
five feet five inches in height, and compactly or 
stoutly built. The head is square, massive, and 
covered with thick, bushy and grizzly hair; the 
cheeks are ruddy; lips red and full, indicating a 
relish for good cheer; nose short and straight; eye- 
brows much arched; eyes dark blue, with what seems, 
to a casual glance, a sleepy expression—but they 
gather light and fire as we examine them. 

He must be sixty, but a vigorous constitution gives 


80 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


promise of a ripe and healthful old age. He is 
active; walks firmly, with a short, quick step. His 
manner is affable, or (more accurately) sociable. 
He converses well, although with no great fluency, 
and has his hobbies of talk; is especially fond of old 
English literature. Altogether, his person, intellect, 
tastes and general peculiarities, bear a very striking 
resemblance to those of the late Nicholas Biddle, 


FREEMAN HUNT 81 


FREEMAN HUNT 


R. HUNT is the editor and proprietor of the 
M well-known “ Merchants’ Magazine,’’ one 
of the most useful of our monthly journals, 

and decidedly the best “property”’ of any work of its 
class. In its establishment he evinced many re- 
markable traits of character. He was entirely with- 
out means, and even much in debt, and otherwise em- 
barrassed, when by one of those intuitive perceptions 
which belong only to genius, but which are usually 
attributed to “good luck,” the “happy” idea en- 
tered his head of getting up a magazine devoted to 
the interests of the influential class of merchants. 
The chief happiness of this idea, however, (which no 
doubt had been entertained and discarded by a 
hundred projectors before Mr. H.,) consisted in the 
method by which he proposed to carry it into opera- 
tion. Neglecting the hackneyed modes of ad- 
vertising largely, circulating flashy prospectuses and 
sending out numerous “agents,’’? who in general, 
merely serve the purpose of boring people into a 
very temporary support of the work in whose be- 
half they are employed, he took the whole matter 
resolutely into his own hands; called personally, in 
the first place, upon his immediate mercantile friends; 
explained to them, frankly and succinctly, his object; 
put the value and necessity of the contemplated 
publication in the best light—as he well knew how to 
do—and in this manner obtained to head his sub- 
scription list a good many of the most eminent business 
men in New York. Armed with their names and with 

VoL, V—6 


82 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


recommendatory letters from many of them, he now 
pushed on to the other chief cities of the Union, and 
thus, in less time than is taken by ordinary men to make 
a preparatory flourish of trumpets, succeeded in 
building up for himself a permanent fortune and for 
the public a journal of immense interest and value. 
In the whole proceeding he evinced a tact, a knowl- 
edge of mankind and a self-dependence which are 
the staple of even greater achievements than the es- 
tablishment of a five dollar magazine. In the sub- 
sequent conduct of the work he gave evidence of 
equal ability. Having without aid put the magazine 
upon a satisfactory footing as regards its circulation, 
he also without aid undertook its editorial and 
business conduct—from the first germ of the con- 
ception to the present moment having kept the whole 
undertaking within his own hands. His _ sub- 
scribers and regular contributors are now among the 
most intelligent and influential in America; the 
journal is regarded as absolute authority in mercan- 
tile matters, circulates extensively not only in this 
country but in Europe, and even in regions more 
remote, affording its worthy and enterprising pro- 
jector a large income, which no one knows better than 
himself how to put to good use. | | 
_ The strong points, the marked peculiarities of Mr. 
Hunt could not have failed in arresting the attention 
of all observers of character; and Mr. Willis in especial 
has made him the subject of repeated comment. I 
copy what follows from the “ New York Mirror’’: 
Hunt has been glorified in the “Hong-Kong Gazette,” 
is regularly complimented by the English mercantile 
authorities, has every bank in the world for an eager sub- 
scriber, every consul, every ship-owner and navigator; is 
filed away as authority in every library, and thought of 


in half the countries of the world as early as No. 3 in their 
enumeration of distinguished Americans, yet who seeks 








FREEMAN HUNT 83 


to do him honor in the city he does honor to? The “ Mer- 
chants’ Magazine,’’ though a prodigy of perseverance and 
industry, is not an accidental development of Hunt’s 
energies. He has always been singularly sagacious and 
- original in devising new works and good ones. He was the 
founder of the first ‘‘Ladies’ Magazine,’’* of the first chil- 
dren’s periodical; he started the ‘‘American Magazine of 
Useful and Entertaining Knowledge,’’ compiled the best 
known collection of American anecdotes and is an inde- 
fatigable writer—the author, among other things of ‘Letters 
About the Hudson.”’ 

Hunt was a playfellow of ours in round-jacket days, 
and we have always looked at him with a reminiscent 
interest. His luminous, eager eyes, as he goes along the 
street, keenly bent on his errand, would impress any 
observer with an idea of his genius and determination, and 
we think it quite time his earnest head was in the engraver’s 
hand and his daily passing by a mark for the dzgito mon- 
strart. Few more worthy or more valuable citizens are 
among us. 


Much of Mr. Hunt’s character is included in what 
I have already said and quoted. He is “earnest,”’ 
“eager,” combining in a very singular manner 
general coolness and occasional excitability. Heisa 
true friend, and the enemy of no man. His heart is 
full of the warmest sympathies and charities. No 
one in New York is more universally popular. 

He is about five feet eight inches in height, well 
proportioned ; complexion dark-florid; forehead capa- 
cious; chin massive and projecting, indicative (ac- 
cording to Lavater and general experience) of that 
energy which is, in fact, the chief point of his charac- 
ter; hair light brown, very fine, of a weblike texture, 
worn long and floating about the face; eyes of 
wonderful brilliancy and intensity of expression; the 
whole countenance beaming with sensibility and in- 
telligence. He is married, and about thirty-eight 
years of age. 

*At this point Mr. Willis is, perhaps, in error. 


84 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


PIERO MARONCELLI 


URING his twelve years’ imprisonment, 
Maroncelli composed a number of poetical 
works, some of which were committed to 

paper, others lost for the want of it. In this country 
he has published a volume entitled “ Additions of the 
Memoirs of Silvio Pellico,’’ containing numerous 
anecdotes of the captivity not recorded in Pellico’s 
work, and an “Essay on the Classic and Romantic 
Schools,’ the author proposing to divide them anew 
and designate them by novel distinctions. ‘There is 
at least some scholarship and some originality in 
this essay. It is also brief. Maroncelli regards it as 
the best of his compositions. It is strongly tinctured 
with transcendentalism. The volume contains, like- 
wise, some poems, of which the “ Psalm of Life,”’ and 
the “ Psalm of the Dawn”’ have never been translated 
into English. “Winds of the Wakened Spring,” 
one of the pieces included, has been happily rendered 
by Mr. Halleck, and is the most favorable specimen 
that could have been selected. These “Additions” 
accompanied a Boston version of “My Prisons, by 
Silvio Pellico.” 

Maroncelli is now about fifty years old, and bears 
on his person the marks of long suffering; he has lost 
a leg; his hair and beard became gray many years 
ago; just now he is suffering from severe illness, and 
from this it can scarcely be expected that he will 
recover. 

In figure he is short and slight. His forehead is 
rather low, but broad. His eyes are light blue and 


PIERO MARONCELLI 85 


weak. The nose and mouth are large. His features 
in general have all the Italian mobility; their expres- 
sion is animated and full of intelligence. He speaks 
hurriedly and gesticulates to excess. He is irritable, 
frank, generous, chivalrous, warmly attached to his 
friends, and expecting from them equal devotion. 
His love of country is unbounded, and he is quite 
enthusiastic in his endeavors to circulate in America 
the literature of Italy. 


86 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


LAUGHTON OSBORN 


as an author, either to the public or in 
literary society, but he has made a great 
many “‘sensations’’ anonymously, or with a nom de 


Pee ase Mr. Osborn is little known 


plume. I am not sure that he has published any- © 


thing with his own name. 

One of his earliest works—if not his earliest—was 
“The Adventures of Jeremy Levis, by Himself,” in 
one volume, a kind of medley of fact, fiction, satire, 
criticism, and novel philosophy. It is a dashing, 
reckless brochure, brimful of talent and audacity. 
Of course it was covertly admired by the few, and 
loudly condemned by all of the many who can fairly 
be said to have seen it at all. It had no great cir- 
culation. There was something wrong, I fancy, in 
the mode of its issue. 

“Jeremy Levis” was followed by “The Dream of 
Alla-Ad-Deen, from the romance of ‘Anastasia,’ 
by Charles Erskine White, D. D.” ‘This is a thin 
pamphlet of thirty-two pages, each page containing 
about a hundred and forty words. Alla-Ad-Deen is 
the son of Aladin, of “wonderful lamp’? memory, 
and the story is in the “Vision of Mirza,” or “ Ras- 
selas’’? way. The design is to reconcile us to death 


and evil, on the somewhat unphilosophical ground — 


that comparatively we are of little importance in the 
scale of creation. The author himself supposes 
this scale to be infinite, and thus his argument proves 
too much; for if evil should be regarded by man as of 
no consequence because, “comparatively,” he is of 


LAUGHTON OSBORN Sy 


fone, it must be regarded as of no consequence by 
the angels for a similar reason—and so on in an ever- 
ending ascent. In other words, the only ' thing 
proved is the rather bullish proposition that evil is 
no evil at all. I do not find that the “Dream”’ 
elicited any attention. It would have been more 
appropriately published in one of our magazines. 
Next in order came, I believe, “The Confessions of 
a Poet, by Himself.’’ This was in two volumes, 
of the ordinary novel form, but printed very openly. 
It made much noise in the literary world, and no 
little curiosity was excited in regard to its author, 
‘who was generally supposed to be John Neal. 
There were some grounds for this supposition, the 
tone and matter of the narrative bearing much 
resemblance to those of “Errata”? and “Seventy- 
Six,’’ especially in the points of boldness and vigor. 
The “Confessions,’’ however, far surpassed any 
production of Mr. Neal’s in a certain air of cultiva- 
tion (if not exactly of scholarship) which pervaded it, 
as well as in the management of its construction—a 
particular in which the author of “The Battle of 
Niagara’’ invariably fails; there is no precision, no 
finish, about anything he does—always an excessive 
force but little of refined art. Mr. N.seems to be defi- 
cient, ina sense of completeness. Hebegins well, vigor- 
ously, startlingly, and proceeds by fits, quite at 
random, now prosing, now exciting vivid interest, 
but his conclusions are sure to be hurried and in- 
distinct, so that the reader perceives a falling off, 
and closes the book with dissatisfaction. He has 
done nothing which, as a whole, is even respectable, 
and “The Confessions” are quite remarkable for 
their artistic unity and perfection. But in higher 
regards they are to be commended. I do not think, 
indeed, that a better book of its kind has been written 


88 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


in America. ‘To be sure, it is not precisely the work | 
to place in the hands of a lady, but its scenes of | 
passion are intensely wrought, its incidents are _ 
striking and original, its sentiments audacious and _ 
suggestive at least, if not at all times tenable. Ina 
word, it is that rare thing, a fiction of power without © 
rudeness. Its spirit, in general, resembles that of 
“Miserrimus” and “ Martin Faber.” | 
Partly on account of what most persons would | 
term their licentiousness, partly, also, on account of | 
the prevalent idea that Mr. Neal (who was never very 
popular with the press) had written them, “The _ 
Confessions,’ by the newspapers, were most unscru-_ 
pulously misrepresented and abused. The “Com-_ 
mercial Advertiser’? of New York, was, it appears, — 
foremost in condemnation, and Mr. Osborn thought | 
proper to avenge his wrongs by the publication of a — 
bulky satirical poem, levelled at the critics in general, — 
but more especially at Colonel Stone, the editor of 
the “Commercial.’’ This satire (which was pub- 
lished in exquisite style as regards print and paper,) 
was entitled “The Vision of Rubeta.’’ Owing to 
the high price necessarily set upon the book, no 
great many copies were sold, but the few that got 
into circulation made quite a hubbub, and with 
reason, for the satire was not only bitter but personal 
in the last degree. It was, moreover, very censur- 
ably indecent—filthy is, perhaps, the more appro- 
priate word. The press, without exception, or 
nearly so, condemned it in loud terms, without tak- 
ing the trouble to investigate its pretensions as a 
literary work. But as “The Confessions of a Poet” 
was one of the best novels of its kind ever written in 
this country, so “The Vision of Rubeta” was de- 
cidedly the best satire. For its vulgarity and gross 
personality there is no defence, but its mordacity 


LAUGHTON OSBORN 89 


cannot be gainsaid. In calling it, however, the best 
American satire, I do not intend any excessive com- 
mendation—for it is, in fact, the only satire com- 
posed by an American. ‘Trumbull’s clumsy work is 
nothing at all, and then we have Halleck’s ‘“ Crock- 
ers,’ which is very feeble—but what is there be- 
sides? ‘‘The Vision”’ is our best satire, and still a 
sadly deficient one. It was bold enough and bitter 
enough, and well constructed and decently versified, 
but it failed in sarcasm because its malignity was 
permitted to render itself evident. The author is 
never very severe because he is never sufficiently 
cool. We laugh not so much at the objects of his 
satire as we do at himself for getting into so great a 
passion. But, perhaps, under no circumstances is 
wit the forte of Mr. Osborn. He has few equals at 
downright invective. 

The “Vision’’ was succeeded by “Arthur Carryl 
and other Poems,” including an additional canto of 
the satire, and several happy although not in all 
cases accurate or comprehensive imitations in 
English of the Greek and Roman metres. “Arthur 
_Carryl”’ is a fragment, in the manner of “ Don Juan.”’ 
I do not think it especially meritorious. It has, 
however, a truth-telling and discriminative preface, 
and its notes are well worthy perusal. Some opin- 
ions embraced in these latter on the topic of versifica- 
tion I have examined in one of the series of articles 
called “ Marginalia.”’ 

I am not aware that since “Arthur Carryl”’ Mr. 
Osborn has written anything more than a “Treatise 
on Oil Painting,’ issued not long ago by Messrs. 
Wiley and Putnam. This work is highly spoken of 
by those well qualified to judge, but is, I believe, 
principally a compilation or compendium. 

In personal character, Mr. O. is one of the most 


go EDGAR ALLAN POE 


remarkable men I ever yet had the pleasure of 
meeting. He.is undoubtedly one of “Nature’s own | 
full of generosity, courage, honor— 


%) 


noblemen, 
chivalrous in every respect, but, unhappily, carrying 
his ideas of chivalry, or rather of independence, to 
the point of Quixotism, if not of absolute insanity. 
He has no doubt been misapprehended, and there- 
fore wronged by the world; but he should not fail to 


remember that the source of the wrong lay in his | 





own idiosyncrasy—one altogether unintelligible and | 


unappreciable by the mass of mankind. 


He is a member of one of the oldest and most in-— 
fluential, formerly one of the wealthiest families in — 
New York. His acquirements and accomplishments — 


are many and unusual. As poet, painter, and 
musician, he has succeeded nearly equally well, and 
absolutely succeeded as each. His scholarship is 


extensive. In the French and Italian languages, he 


is quite at home, and in everything he is thorough and 
accurate. His critical abilities are to be highly re- 
spected, although he is apt to swear somewhat too 
roundly by Johnson and Pope. Imagination is not 
Mr. Osborn’s forte. 

He is about thirty-two or three—certainly na 
more than thirty-five years of age. In person he is 
well made, probably five feet ten or eleven, muscular 
and active. Hair, eyes, and complexion, rather 
light; fine teeth; the whole expression of the counte- 
nance manly, frank, and prepossessing in the highest 
degree. 


FITZ-GREENE HALLECK gt 


FITZ-GREENE HALLECK 


HE name of Halleck is at least as well 
established in the poetical world as that of 
| any American. Our principal poets are, 
perhaps, most frequently named in this order— 
Bryant, Halleck, Dana, Sprague, Longfellow, Willis, 
and so on—Halleck coming second in the series, but 
holding, in fact, a rank in the public opinion quite 
equal to that of Bryant. The accuracy of the ar- 
rangement as above made may, indeed, be questioned. 
For my own part, I should have it thus—Longfellow, 
Bryant, Halleck, Willis, Sprague, Dana; and, esti- 
mating rather the poetic capacity than the poems 
actually accomplished, there are three or four com- 
paratively unknown writers whom I would place in 
the series between Bryant and Halleck, while there 
are about a dozen whom I should assign a position 
between Willis and Sprague. Two dozen at least 
might find room between Sprague and Dana—this 
latter, I fear, owing a very large portion of this 
reputation to his guondam editorial connexion with 
“The North American Review.’’ One or two poets, 
now in my mind’s eye, I should have no hesitation 
in posting above even Mr. Longfellow—still not in- 
tending this as very extravagant praise. 

It is noticeable, however, that, in the arrange- 
ment which I attribute to the popular understanding, 
the order observed is nearly, if not exactly, that of 
the ages—the poetic ages—of the individual poets. 
Those rank first who were first known. The priority 
has established the strength of impression. Nor is 
this result to be accounted for by mere reference to 
the old saw—that first impressions are the strongest. 


92 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Gratitude, surprise, and a species of hyper-patriotic 
triumph have been blended, and finally confounded 
with admiration or appreciation in regard to the 
pioneers of American literature, among whom there 
is not one whose productions have not been grossly 
overrated by his countrymen. Hitherto we have 
been in no mood to view with ealmness and discuss 
with discrimination the real claims of the few who 
were first in convincing the mother country that her 
sons were not all brainless, as at one period she half 
affected and wholly wished to believe. Is there any 
one so blind as not to see that Mr. Cooper, for 
example, owes much, and Mr. Paulding nearly all, of 
his reputation as a novelist to his early occupation 
of the field? Is there any one so dull as not to know 
that fictions which neither of these gentlemen could 
have written are written daily by native authors, 
without attracting much more of commendation than 
can be included in a newspaper paragraph? And, 
again, is there any one so prejudiced as not to ac- 
knowledge that all this happens because there is 
no longer either reason or wit in the query, ‘“ Who 
reads an American book?”’ 

I mean to say, of course, that Mr. Halleck, in the 
apparent public estimate, maintains a somewhat 
better position than that to which, on absolute 
grounds, he is entitled. ‘There is something, too, in 
the bonhommie of certain of his compositions— 
something altogether distinct from poetic merit— 
which has aided to establish him; and much, also, 
must be admitted on the score of his personal popu- 
larity, which is deservedly great. With all these 
allowances, however, there will still be found a large 
amount of poetical fame to which he is fazrly entitled. 

He has written very little, although he began at 
an early age—when quite a boy, indeed. His 


FITZ-GREENE HALLECK 93 


“juvenile” works, however, have been kept very 
judiciously from the public eye. Attention was 
first called to him by his satires, signed “ Croaker’”’ 
and “Croaker & Co.,’’ published in “The New York 
Evening Post,’’in 1819. Of these the pieces with the 
signature “Croaker & Co.’’ were the joint work of 
Halleck and his friend Drake. The political and 
personal features of these jeux d’esprit gave them a 
consequence and a notoriety to which they are en- 
titled on no other account. They are not without 
a species of drollery, but are loosely and no doubt 
carelessly written. 

Neither was “ Fanny,’ which closely followed the 
“Croakers,’”’ constructed with any great deliberation. 
“It was printed,”’ say the ordinary memoirs, ‘‘within 
three weeks from its commencement’”’; but the truth 
is, that a couple of days would have been an ample 
allowance of time for any such composition. If we 
except a certain gentlemanly ease and iusouciance, 
with some fancy of illustration, there is really very 
little about this poem to be admired. There has 
been no positive avowal of its authorship, although 
there can be no doubt of its having been written by 
Halleck. He, I presume, does not esteem it very 
highly. lt is a mere extravaganza, in close imita- 
tion of “Don Juan’’—a vehicle for squibs at co- 
temporary persons and things. 

Our poet, indeed, seems to have been much im- 
pressed by “Don Juan,’ and attempts to engraft 
its farcicalities even upon the grace and delicacy of 
“ Alnwick Castle,” as, for example, in— 


Men in the coal and cattle line, 
From Teviot’s bard and hero land, 
From royal Berwick’s beach of sand, 
From Wooler, Morpeth, Hexham, and 
Newcastle upon Tyne. 


94 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


These things may lay claim to oddity, but no more. 
They are totally out of keeping with the tone of the 
sweet poem into which they are thus clumsily in- 
troduced, and serve no other purpose than to de- 
prive it of all unity of effect. If a poet must be far- 
cical, let him be just that; he can be nothing better 


at the same moment. To be drolly sentimental, or | 


even sentimentally droll, is intolerable to men anda 
gods and columns. ) 

‘Alnwick Castle’ is distinguished, in general, 
by that air of quiet grace, both in thought and 
expression, which is the prevailing feature of the 
muse of Halleck. Its second stanza is a good speci- 
men of this manner. The commencement of the 
fourth belongs to a very high order of poetry. 


Wild roses by the Abbey towers 

Are gay in their young bed and bloom— 
They were born of a race of funeral flowers 
That garlanded, in long-gone hours, 

A Templar’s knightly tomb. 


This is gloriously imaginative, and the effect is 
singularly increased by the sudden transition from 
iambuses to anapzsts. The passage is, I think, 
the noblest to be found in Halleck, and I would be 
at a loss to discover its parallel in all American 
poetry. 

“Marco Bozzaris” has much lyrical, without 
any great amount of zdeal beauty. Force is its 
prevailing feature—force resulting rather from well- 
ordered metre, vigorous rhythm, and a judicious 
disposal of the circumstances of the poem, than 
from any of the truer lyric material. I should do 
my conscience great wrong were I to speak of “ Marco 
Bozzaris”’ as it is the fashion to speak of it, at least 
in print. Even as a lyric or ode it is surpassed by 


} 


FITZ-GREENE HALLECK 95 


many American and a multitude of foreign com- 
positions of a similar character. 

“Burns’’ has numerous passages exemplifying 
its author’s felicity of expression; as, for instance— 


Such graves as his are pilgrim shrines— 
Shrines to no code or creed confined—= 
The Delphian vales, the Palestines, 
The Meccas of the mind. 


And, again— 


There have been loftier themes than his, 
And longer scrolls and louder lyres, 
And lays lit up with Poesy’s 
Purer and holter fires. 


But to the sentiment involved in this last quatrain 
I feel disposed to yield an assent more thorough 
than might be expected. Burns, indeed, was the 
puppet of circumstance. As a poet, no. person on 
the face of the earth has been more extravagantly, 
more absurdly overrated. 

“The Poet’s Daughter’’ is one of the most charac- 
teristic works of Halleck, abounding in his most 
distinctive traits, grace, expression, repose, 1- 
souciance. ‘The vulgarity of 


I’m busy in the cotton trade 
And sugar line, 


has, I rejoice to see, been omitted in the late editicns. 
The eleventh stanza is certainly not English as it 
stands, and, besides, is quite unintelligible. What 
is the meaning of this— 


But her who asks, though first among 

The good, the beautiful, the young, 

The birthright of a spell more strong 
Than these have brought her. 


96 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


The “Lines on the Death of Joseph kKodman 
Drake”’ is, as a wnole, one of the best poems of its 
author. Its simplicity and delicacy of sentiment 
will recommend it to all readers. It is, however, 
carelessly written, and the first quatrain, 


Green be the turf above thee, 
Friend of my better days— 
None knew thee but to love thee, 
Nor named thee but to praise. 


although beautiful, bears too close a resemblance 
to the still more beautiful lines of Wordsworth— 


She dwelt among the untrodden ways 
Beside the springs of Dove, 

A maid whom there were none to praise, 
And very few to love. 


In versification Mr. Halleck is much as usual, 
although in this regard Mr. Bryant has paid him 
numerous compliments. “Marco Bozzaris” has 
certainly some vigor of rhythm, but its author, in 
short, writes carelessly, loosely, and, as a matter 
of course, seldom effectively, so far as the outworks 
of literature are concerned. 


Of late days he has nearly given up the muses, 


and we recognise his existence as a poet chiefly by 
occasional translations from the Spanish or German. 

Personally, he is a man to be admired, respected, 
but more especially beloved. His address has all 
the captivating bonhommie which is the leading 
feature of his poetry, and, indeed, of his whole 
moral nature. With his friends he is all ardor, 


enthusiasm and cordiality, but to the world at large 


he is reserved, shunning society, into which he is 
seduced only with difficulty, and upon rare occasions. 
The love of solitude seems to have become with 
him a passion. 


FITZ-GREENE HALLECK 04 


He is a good modern linguist, and an excellent 
belles lettres scholar; in general, has read a great 
deal, although very discursively. He is what the 
world calls ultra in most of his opinions, more particu- 
larly about literature and politics, and is fond of 
-broaching and supporting paradoxes. He converses 
fluently, with animation and zeal; is choice and 
accurate in his language, exceedingly quick at 
repartee, and apt at anecdote. His manners are 
courteous, with dignity and a little tincture of 
Gallicism. His age is about fifty. In height he 
is probably five feet seven. He has been stout, but 
may now be called well-proportioned. His fore- 
head is a noble one, broad, massive and intellectual, 
a little bald about the temples; eyes dark and 
brilliant, but not large; nose Grecian; chin promi- 
nent; mouth finely chiselled and full of expression, al- 
though thelips are thin ;—his smile is peculiarly sweet. 

In “Graham’s Magazine”’ for September, 1843, 
there appeared an engraving of Mr. Halleck from 
a painting by Inman. The likeness conveys a 
good general idea of the man, but is far too stout 
and youthful-looking for his appearance at present. 

His usual pursuits have been commercial, but 
he is now the principal superintendent of the business 
of Mr. John Jacob Astor. He is unmarried. 


Vor. V—7 


98 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


ANN S. STEPHENS 


RS. STEPHENS has made no collection 
M of her works, but has written much for 

the magazines, and well. Her com- 
positions have been brief tales with occasional poems. 
She made her first “sensation’’ in obtaining a pre- 
minum of four hundred dollars, offered for “the 
best prose story’’ by some one of our journals, her © 
“Mary Derwent” proving the successful article. — 
The amount of the prize, however—a much larger 
one than it has been the custom to offer—had more 
to do with the éclat of the success than had the 
positive merit of the tale, although this is very con- 
siderable. She has subsequently written several 
better things—‘‘ Malina Gray,” for example, “ Alice 
Copley,” and ‘The Two Dukes.” These are on 
serious subjects. In comic ones she has compara- 
tively failed. She is fond of the bold, striking, 
trenchant—in a word, of the melo-dramatic; has 
a quick appreciation of the picturesque, and is not 
unskilful in delineations of character. She seizes 
adroitly on salient incidents and presents them 
with vividness to the eye, but in their combinations 
or adaptations she is by no means so thoroughly 
at home—that is to say, her plots are not so good 
as are their individual items. Her style is what 
the critics usually term ‘“ powerful,” but lacks real 
power through its verboseness and floridity. It is, . 
in fact, generally turgid—even bombastic—involved, 
needlessly parenthetical, and superabundant in 
epithets, although these latter are frequently well 





ANN 8S. STEPHENS 99 


chosen. Her sentences are, also, for the most part 
too long; we forget their commencements ere we 
get at their terminations. Her faults, nevertheless, 
both in matter and manner, belong to the effer- 
vescence of high talent, if not exactly of genius. 

Of Mrs. Stephens’ poetry I have seen so very 
little that I feel myself scarcely in condition to 
speak of it. 

She began her literary life, I believe, by editing 
“The Portland Magazine,” and has since been 
announced as editress of ‘The Ladies’ Companion,”’ 
a monthly journal published some years ago in New 
York, and also, at a later period, of “Graham’s 
Magazine,’ and subsequently, again of ‘‘ Peterson’s 
National Magazine.’ These announcements were 
announcements and no more; the lady had nothing 
to do with the editorial control of either of the 
three last-named works. 

The portrait of Mrs. Stephens which appeared in 
“Graham’s Magazine’ for November, 1844, cannot 
fairly be considered a likeness at all. She is tall 
and slightly inclined to embonpoint—an English 
figure. Her forehead is somewhat low, but broad; 
the features generally massive, but full of life and 
intellectuality. The eyes are blue and brilliant; 
the hair blonde and verv luxuriant. 


100 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


EVERT A. DUYCKINCK 


R. DUYCKINCK is one of the most 
M influential of the New York littérateurs, 

and has done a great deal for the interests 
of American letters. Not the least important 
service rendered by him was the projection and 
editorship of Wiley and Putnam’s “Library of 
Choice Reading,” a series which brought to public 
notice many valuable foreign works which had been 
suffering under neglect in this country, and at the 
same time afforded unwonted encouragement to 


native authors by publishing their books, in good 


style and in good company, without trouble or risk 
to the authors themselves, and in the very teeth 
of the disadvantages arising from the want ofan 
international copyright law. At one period it 
seemed that this happy scheme was to be over- 
whelmed by the competition of rival publishers— 
taken, in fact, quite out of the hands of those who, 
by “right of discovery,” were entitled at least to 
its first fruits. A great variety of “ Libraries,” in 
imitation, were set on foot, but whatever may have 
been the temporary success of any of these latter, 
the original one had already too well established 
itself in the public favor to be overthrown, and thus 
has not been prevented from proving of great benefit 
to our literature at large. 

Mr. Duyckinck has slyly acquired much fame 
and numerous admirers under the nom de plume of 
“Felix Merry.” The various essays thus _ signed 
have attracted attemtion everywhere from the 


| 


EVERT A. DUYCKINCK IOI 


judicious. The style is remarkable for its very 
unusual blending of purity and ease with a seem- 
ingly inconsistent originality, force and independence. 

“Felix Merry,’’ in connexion with Mr. Cornelius 
_ Matthews, was one of the editors and originators 
of “Arcturus,” decidedly the very best magazine 
in many respects ever published in the United 
States. A large number of its most interesting 
papers were the work of Mr. D. The magazine 
was, upon the whole, a little too good to enjoy 
extensive popularity—although I am here using 
an equivocal phrase, for a better journal might have 
been far more acceptable to the public. I must be 
understood, then, as employing the epithet “good” 
in the sense of the literary quietists. The general 
taste of “Arcturus’’ was, I think, excessively tasteful; 
but this character applies rather more to its external 
or mechanical appearance than to its essential 
qualities. Unhappily, magazines and other similar 
publications, are, in the beginning, judged chiefly 
by externals. People saw “Arcturus”’ looking very 
much like other works which had failed through 
notorious dullness, although admitted as arbitrt 
elegantiarum in all points of what is termed taste 
or decorum; and they, the people, had no patience 
to examine any farther. Czesar’s wife was required 
not only to be virtuous but to seem so, and in letters 
it is demanded not only that we be not stupid, but 
that we do not array ourselves in the habiliments 
of stupidity. 

It cannot be said of ‘‘ Arcturus” exactly that it 
wanted force. It was deficient in power of impres- 
sion, and this deficiency is to be attributed mainly 
to the exceeding brevity of its articles—a brevity 
that degenerated into mere paragraphism, pre- 
cluding dissertation cr argument, and thus all 


102 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


permanent effect. The magazine, in fact, had 
some of the worst or most inconvenient features 
without any of the compensating advantages of a 
weekly literary newspaper. The mannerism to 
which I refer seemed to have its source in undue 
admiration and consequent imitation of “The 
Spectator.”’ . 

In addition to his more obvious literary engage- 
ments, Mr. Duyckinck writes a great deal, editorially 
and otherwise, for “The Democratic Review,” 
“The Morning News,” and other periodicals. 

In character he is remarkable, distinguished for 
the bonhommie of his manner, his simplicity and 
single-mindedness, his active beneficence, his hatred 
of wrong done even to any enemy, and especially 
for an almost Quixotic fidelity to his friends. He 
seems in perpetual good humor with all things, 
and I have no doubt that in his secret heart he is an 
optimist. 

In person he is equally simple as in character— 
the one is a pendent of the other. He is about five 
feet eight inches high, somewhat slender. The 
forehead, phrenologically, is a good one; eyes and 
hair light; the whole expression of the face that of | 
serenity and benevolence, contributing to give an © 
idea of youthfulness. He is probably thirty, but 
does not seem to be twenty-five. His dress, also, 
is in full keeping with his character, scrupulously © 
neat but plain, and conveying an instantaneous | 
conviction of the gentleman. He is a descendant © 
of one of the oldest and best Dutch families in the _ 
state, Married. | 


MARY GOVE 103 


MARY GOVE 


RS. MARY GOVE, under the pseudonym 
M. of “Mary Orme,” has written many 
excellent papers for the magazines. Her 
subjects are usually tinctured with the mysticism 
of the transcendentalists, but are truly imaginative. 
Her style is quite remarkable for its luminousness 
and precision—two qualities very rare with her sex. 
An article entitled “The Gift of Prophecy,” published 
originally in “The Broadway Journal,” is a fine 
specimen of her manner. 

Mrs. Gove, however, has acquired less notoriety 
by her literary compositions than by her lectures 
on physiology to classes of females. ‘These lectures 
are said to have been instructive and useful; they 
certainly elicited .much attention. Mrs. G. has 
also given public discourses on Mesmerism, I believe, 
and other similar themes—matters which put to 
the severest test the credulity, or, more properly, 
the faith of mankind. She is, I think, a Mesmerist, 
a Swedenborgian, a phrenologist, a homceopathist, 
and a disciple of Priessnitz—what rmore I am not 
prepared to say. 

She is rather below the medium height, some- 
what thin, with dark hair and keen, intelligent black 
eyes. She converses well and with enthusiasm. 
In many respects a very interesting woman. 


104 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


JAMES ALDRICH 


R. ALDRICH has written much for the 
M magazines, &c., and at one time assisted 

Mr. Park Benjamin in the conduct of 
“The New World.” He also originated, I believe, 
and edited a not very long-lived or successful weekly 
paper, called “The Literary Gazette,’ an imitation 
in its external appearance of the London journal 
of the same name. I am not aware that he has 
made any collection of his writings. His poems 
abound in the true poetic spirit, but they are fre- 
quently chargeable with plagiarism, or something 
much like it. True, I have seen but three of Mr. 
Aldrich’s compositions in verse—the three (or 
perhaps there are four of them,) included by Doctor 
Griswold in his “ Poets and Poetry of America.” 
Of these three, (or four,) however, there are two 
which I cannot help regarding as palpable plagiar- 
isms. Of one of them, in especial, “A Death-Bed,”’ 
it is impossible to say a plausible word in defence. 
Both in matter and manner it is nearly identical 
with a little piece entitled “Zhe Death-Bed,” by 
Thomas Hood. 

The charge of plagiarism, nevertheless, is a purely 
literary one; and a plagiarism even distinctly proved 
by no means necessarily involves any moral delin- 
quency. This proposition applies very especially 
to what appear to be poetical thefts. The poetic 
sentiment presupposes a keen appreciation of the 
beautiful with a longing for its assimilation into 
the poetic identity. What the poet intensely 
admires becomes, thus, in very fact, although only 


JAMES ALDRICH 108 


partially, a portion of his own soul. Within this 
soul it has a secondary origination; and the poet, 
thus possessed by another’s thought, cannot be said 
to take of it possession. But in either view he 
thoroughly feels it as hts own; and the tendency to 
this feeling is counteracted only by the sensible 
presence of the true, palpable origin of the thought 
in the volume whence he has derived it—an origin 
which, in the long lapse of years, it is impossible 
not to forget, should the thought itself, as it often 
is, be forgotten. But the frailest association will 
regenerate it: it springs up with all the vigor of a 
new birth; its absolute originality is not with the 
poet a matter even of suspicion; and when he has 
written it and printed it, and on its account is 
charged with plagiarism, there will be no one more 
entirely astounded than himself. Now, from what 
I have said, it appears that the liability to accidents 
of this character is in the direct ratio of the poetic 
sentiment, of the susceptibility to the poetic im- 
pression; and, in fact, all literary history demon- 
strates that, for the most frequent and palpable 
plagiarisms we must search the works of the most 
eminent poets. 

Since penning the above I have found five qua- 
trains by Mr. Aldrich, with the heading “Molly 
Gray.’ These verses are in the fullest exemplifica- 
tion of what I have just said of their author, evincing 
at once, in the most remarkable manner, both his 
merit as an imaginative poet and his unconquerable 
proneness to imitation. I quote the two conclud- 
ing quatrains. 


Pretty, fairy Molly Gray! 
What may thy fit emblems be? 
Stream or star or bird or flower— 
They are all too poor for thee. 


106 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


No type to match thy beauty 
My wandering fancy brings 
Not fatrer than tts chrysalis 
Thy soul with tts golden wings! 


Here the “Pretty, fairy Molly Gray!” will put 
every reader in mind of Tennyson’s “Airy, fairy 
Lillian!’ by which Mr. Aldrich’s whole poem has 
been clearly suggested; but the thought in the 
finale is, as far as I know anything about it, original, 
and is not more happy than happily expressed. 

Mr. Aldrich is about thirty-six years of age. In © 
regard to his person there is nothing to be especially 
noted. 


HENRY CARY 107 


HENRY CARY 


to the appendix of “ The Poet and Poetry,’’ 

as Mr. Henry Carey, and gives him credit 
for an Anacreontic song of much merit entitled, 
or commencing, “Old Wine to Drink.’ This was 
not written by Mr. C. He has composed little verse, 
if any, but, under the nom de plume of “John 
Waters,” has acquired some note by a series of 
prose essays in “The New York American,’ and 
“The Knickerbocker.” ‘These essays have merit, 
unquestionably, but some person, in an article fur- 
nished ‘The Broadway Journal,” before my assump- 
tion of its editorship, has gone to the extreme of 
toadyism in their praise. ‘This critic (possibly Mr. 
Briggs) thinks that John Waters “is in some sort a 
Sam Rogers’’—‘‘resembles Lamb in fastidiousness 
of taste’? —‘‘has a finer artistic taste than the 
author of the ‘Sketch Book’’’—that his “sentences 
are the most perfect in the language—too perfect 
to be peculiar’’—that “it would be a vain task to 
hunt through them all for a superfluous conjunction,” 
and that “we need them (the works of John Waters!) 
as models of style in these days of rhodomontades 
and Macaulayisms!”’ ? 

The truth seems to be that Mr. Cary isa vivacious, 
fanciful, entertaining essayist—a fifth or sixth rate 
one—with a style that, as times go—in view of 
such stylists as Mr. Briggs, for example—may be 
termed respectable, and no more. What the critic 
of the B. J. wishes us to understand by a style that 


Dee GRISWOLD introduces Mr. Cary 


108 EDGAR ALLAN. POE 


>) ce 


is ‘too perfect, the most perfect,’’ etc., it is 
scarcely worth while to inquire, since it is generally 
supposed that “perfect’’ admits of no degrees of 
comparison; but if Mr. Briggs (or whoever it is) 
finds it “a vain task to hunt” through all Mr. John 
Waters’ works “for a superfluous conjunction,” 
there are few schoolboys who would not prove 
more successful hunters than Mr. Briggs. 

“It was well filled,’’ says the essayist, on the very 
page containing these encomiums, and yet the 
number of performers,’’ etc. “We paid our visit 
to the incomparable ruins of the castle, and then 
proceeded to retrace our steps, and, examine our 
wheels at every post-house, reached,” etc. “After 
consultation with a mechanic at Heildelberg, and 
finding that,’’ etc. The last sentence should read, 
“Finding, after consultation,’’ etc.—the “and”. 
would thus be avoided. ‘Those in the two sentences 
first quoted are obviously pleonastic. Mr. Cary, 
in fact, abounds very especially in superfluities—(as 
here, for example,“ He seated himself at a piano 
that was near the front of the stage’’)—-and, to speak 
the truth, is continually guilty of all kinds of gram- 
matical improprieties. I repeat that, in this re- 
spect, he is decent, and no more. 

Mr. Cary is what Doctor Griswold calls a “gentle- 
man of elegant leisure.’’ He is wealthy and much 
addicted to letters and wirt#. For a long time he 
was President of the Phcenix Bank of New York, 
and the principal part of his life has been devoted 
to business. There is nothing remarkable about his 
personable appearance. 


CHRISTOPHER PEASE CRANCH tog 


Prt CORA ERI PRASE CRAN CH 


HE REVEREND C. P. CRANCH is one of 
the least intolerable of the school of Boston 
transcendentalists—and, in fact, I believe 
that he has at last ‘‘come out from among them,” 
abandoned their doctrines (whatever they are) and 
given up their company in disgust. He was at one 
time one of the most noted, and undoubtedly one of 
the least absurd contributors to ‘‘The Dial,” but 
has reformed his habits of thought and speech, domi- 
ciliated himself in New York, and set up the easel of 
an artist in one of the Gothic chambers of the 
University. 

About two years ago a volume of ‘‘Poems by 
Christopher Pease Cranch”’ was published by Carey 
and Hart. It was most unmercifully treated by 
the critics, and much injustice, in my opinion, was 
done to the poet. He seems to me to possess un- 
usual vivacity of fancy and dexterity of expression, 
while his versification is remarkable for its accuracy, 
vigor, and even for its originality of effect. I might 
Say, perhaps, rather more than all this, and main- 

tain that he has imagination if he would only con- 
descend to employ it, which he will not, or would 
not until lately—the word-compounders and quibble 
concoctors of Frogpondium having inoculated him 
with a preference for Imagination’s half sister, the 
Cinderella Fancy. Mr. Cranch has seldom contented 
himself with harmonious combinations of thought. 
There must always be, to afford him perfect satis- 
faction, a certain amount of the odd, of the whim- 
sical, of the affected, of the bizarre. He is full of 
absurd conceits as Cowley or Donne, with this dif- 


1 Ke) EDGAR ALLAN POE 


ference, that the conceits of these latter are Eu- 
phuisms beyond redemption—flat, irremediable, self- 
contented nonsensicalities, and in so much are good 
of their kind; but the conceits of Mr. Cranch are, for 
the most part, conceits intentionally manufactured, 
for conceit’s sake, out of the material for properly 
imaginative, harmonious, proportionate, or poetical 
ideas. We see every moment that he has been at 
uncommon pains to make a fool of himself. 

But perhaps I am wrong in supposing that I am 
at all in condition to decide on the merits of Mr. 
C.’s poetry, which is professedly addressed to the 
few. ‘‘Him we will seek,” says the poet— 


Him we will seek, and none but him, 
Whose inward sense hath not grown dim; 
Whose soul is steeped in Nature’s tinct 
And to the Universal linked; 

Who loves the beauteous Infinite 

With deep and ever new delight, 

And carrieth where’er he goes 

The inborn sweetness of the rose, 

The perfume as of Paradise— 

The talisman above all price— 

The optic glass that wins from far | 
The meaning of the utmost star— | 
The key that opes the golden doors 
Where earth and heaven have piled their stores— 
The magic ring, the enchanter’s wand— | 
The title-deed to Wonder-Land— 
The wisdom that o’erlooketh sense, 
The clairvoyance of Innocence. 


This is all very well, fanciful, pretty, and neatie) 
turned—all with the exception of the last two lines, 
and it is a pity they were not left out. It is laugh- 
able to see that the transcendental poets, if beguiled | 
for a minute or two into respectable English and | 
common sense, are always sure to remember their) 
cue just as they get to the end of their song, which, 


CHRISTOPHER PEASE CRANCH sir 


by way of salvo, they then round off with a bit of 
doggerel about ‘“‘wisdom that o’erlooketh sense”’ 
and ‘‘the clairvoyance of Innocence.” It is especi- 
ally observable that, in adopting the cant of thought, 
the cant of phraseology is adopted at the same 
instant. Can Mr. Cranch, or can anybody else, 
inform me why it is that, in the really sensible open- 
ing passages of what I have here quoted, he employs 
the modern, and only in the final couplet of goose- 
therumfoodle makes use of the obsolete terminations 
of verbs in the third person singular, present tense? 

One of the best of Mr. Cranch’s compositions 
is undoubtedly his poem on Niagara. It has some 
natural thoughts, and grand ones, suiting the sub- 
ject; but then they are more than half-divested of 
their nature by the attempt at adorning them with 
oddity of expression. Quatntness is an admissible 
and important adjunct to ideality—an adjunct 
whose value has been long misapprehended—but 
in picturing the sublime it is altogether out of place. 
What idea of power, of grandeur, for example, can 
any human being connect even with Niagara, when 
Niagara is described in language so trippingly fan- 
tastical, so palpably adapted to a purpose, as that 
which follows? 


I stood upon a speck of ground; 
Before me fell a stormy ocean. 
I was like a captive bound; 
And around 
A universe of sound 
Troubled the heavens with ever-quivering motion. 


Down, down forever—down, down forever— 
Something falling, falling, falling; 
Up, up forever——up, up forever, 
Resting never, 
Boiling up forever, 
Steam-clouds shot up with thunder-bursts appalling. 


112 EDGAR ALLAN POE . | 


It is difficult to conceive anything more ludi- 
crously out of keeping than the thoughts of these 
stanzas and the petit-maitre, fidgety, hop-skip-and. 
jump air of the words and the Liliputian parts of 
the versification. : 

A somewhat similar metre is adopted by Mr. C. 
in his ‘‘Lines on Hearing Triumphant Music,” but 
as the subject is essentially different, so the effect. 
is by no means so displeasing. I copy one of the 
stanzas as the noblest individual passage which 
I can find among all the poems of its author. 


That glorious strain! 
Oh, from my brain 
I see the shadow flitting like scared ghosts. 
A light—a light 
Shines tn to-night 
Round the good angels trooping to their posts, 
And the black cloud ts rent in twain 
Before the ascending strain. | 


Mr. Cranch is well educated, and quite accom- 
plished. Like Mr. Osborn, he is musician, painter, 
and poet, being in each capacity very respectably 
successful. 

He is about thirty-three or four years of age; in. 
height, perhaps five feet eleven; athletic; front face 
not unhandsome—the forehead evincing intellect, | 
and the smile pleasant; but the profile is marred by > 
the turning up of the nose, and, altogether is hard 
and disagreeable. His eyes and hair are dark 
brown—the latter worn short, slightly inclined to. 
curl. Thick whiskers meeting under the chin, and 
much out of keeping with the shirtcollar 4 la Byron. 
Dresses with marked plainness. He is married 





, 
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SARAH -MARGAR 


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ait = 


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FULLER 





THE UINeARY 
OF THE 
UNIVERSITY AF EPMINOIS 





SARAH MARGARET FULLER 413 


SARAH MARGARET FULLER 


ISS FULLER was at one time editor, or 
ME one of the editors of ‘‘The Dial,’’ to which 

she contributed many of the most forcible 
and certainly some of the most peculiar papers. 
she is known, too, by ‘‘Summer on the Lakes,” a 
remarkable assemblage of sketches, issued in 1844, 
by Little & Brown, of Boston. More lately she has 
published ‘‘Woman in the Nineteenth Century,” 
a work which has occasioned much discussion, 
having had the good fortune to be warmly abused 
and chivalrously defended. At present, she is 
assistant editor of ‘‘The New York Tribune,”’ or 
rather a salaried contributor to that journal, for 
which she has furnished a great variety of matter, 
chiefly notices of new books, etc., etc., her articles 
being designated by an asterisk. Two of the best 
of them were a review of Professor Longfellow’s 
late magnificent edition of his own works, (with a 
portrait,) and an appeal to the public in behalf of 
her friend Harro Harring. The review did her 
infinite credit; it was frank, candid, independent— 
in even ludicrous contrast to the usual mere glori- 
fications of the day, giving honor only where honor 
was due, yet evincing the most thorough capacity 
to appreciate and the most sincere intention to 
place in the fairest light the real and idiosyncratic 
merits of the poet. 

_In my opinion it is one of the very few reviews 
of Longfellow’s poems, ever published in America, 
of which the critics have nct had abundant reason 

VoL, V—? : 


ti4 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


to be ashamed. Mr. Longfellow is entitled to a 
certain and very distinguished rank among the 
poets of his country, but that country is disgraced 
by the evident toadyism which would award to his 
social position and influence, to his fine paper and 
large type, to his morocco binding and gilt edges, 
to his flattering portrait of himself, and to the 
illustrations of his poems by Huntingdon, that 
amount of indiscriminate approbation which neither 
could nor would have been given to the poems 
themselves. 

The defence of Harro Harring, or rather the 
Philipic against those who were doing him wrong, 
was one of the most eloquent and well-put articles 
I have ever yet seen in a newspaper. 

‘Woman in the Nineteenth Century” is a book — 
which few women in the country could have written, 
and no woman in the country would have published, — 
with the exception of Miss Fuller. In the way of 
independence, of unmitigated radicalism, it is one | 
of the ‘“‘Curiosities of American Literature,’ and — 
Doctor Griswold should include it in his book. I | 
need scarcely say that the essay is nervous, forcible, _ 
thoughtful, suggestive, brilliant, and to a certain | 
extent scholar-like—for all that Miss Fuller produces — 
is entitled to these epithets—but I must say that | 
the conclusions reached are only in part my own, | 
Not that they are too bold, by any means—too — 
novel, too startling, or too dangerous in their con-_ 
sequences, but that in their attainment too many 
premises have been distorted, and too many ana- 
logical inferences left altogether out of sight. I 
mean to say that the intention of the Deity as 
regards sexual differences—an intention which can | 
be distinctly comprehended only by throwing the 
exterior (more sensitive) portions of the mental — 








| 
; 
; 


SARAH MARGARET FULLER IIs 


retina casually over the wide field of universal 
analogy—I mean to say that this zntention has not 
been sufficiently considered. Miss Fuller has erred, 


‘too, through her own excessive objectiveness. She 


judges woman by the heart and intellect of Miss 
Fuller, but there are not more than one or two 
dozen Miss Fullers on the whole face of the earth. 
Holding these opinions in regard to ‘‘Woman in the 
Nineteenth Century,” I still feel myself called upon 
to disavow the silly, condemnatory criticism of the 
work which appeared in one of the earlier numbers 
of ‘‘The Broadway Journal.” ‘That article was not 
written by myself, and was written by my associate, 
Mr. Briggs. 

The most favorable estimate of Miss Fuller’s 
genius (for high genius she unquestionably possesses) 
is to be obtained, perhaps, from her contributions 
to ‘‘The Dial,’ and from her “‘Summer on the 
Lakes.”’ Many of the descriptions in this volume 
are unrivalled for graphicality, (why is there not 
such a word?) for the force with which they convey 
the true by the novel or unexpected, by the intro- 
duction of touches which other artists would be 
sure to omit as irrelevant to the subject. This 
faculty, too, springs from her subjectiveness, which 
leads her to paint a scene less by its features than 
by its effects. 

Here, for example, is a portion of her account of 
Niagara :— 

Daily these proportions widened and towered more and 
more upon my sight, and I got at last a proper foreground 
for these sublime distances. Before coming away, I 
think I really saw the full wonder of the scene. After 
awhile it so drew me into itself as to inspire an undefined dread, 
such as I never knew before, such as may be felt when death 


ts about to usher us into a new existence, The perpetual 
trampling of the waters seized my senses. I felt that no 


116 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


other sound, however near, could be heard, and would start 
and look behind me for a foe. I realized the identity of that — 
mood of nature in which these waters were poured down | 
with such absorbing force, with that in which the Indian 
was shaped on the same soil. For continually upon my — 
mind came, unsought and unwelcome, tmages, such as had 
never haunted it before, of naked savages stealing behind me 
with uplifted tomahawks. Again and again this illusion 
recurred, and even after I had thought it over, and tried to 
shake it off, I could not help starting and looking behind me. 
What I liked best was to sit on Table Rock close to the 
great fall; there all power of observing detatls, all separate 
consciousness was quite lost. 

The truthfulness of the passages italicized will 
be felt by all; the feelings described are, perhaps, 
experienced by every (imaginative) person who 
visits the fall; but most persons, through predomi- 
nant subjectiveness, would scarcely be conscious of 
the feelings, or, at best, would never think of employ- 
ing them in an attempt to convey to others an 
impression of the scene. Hence so many desperate 
failures to convey it on the part of ordinary tourists. 
Mr. William W. Lord, to be sure, in his poem “‘ Niag- 
ara,’ is sufficiently objective; he describes not the 
fall, but very properly the effect of the fall upon 
him. He says that it made him think of his own 
greatness, of his own superiority, and so forth, and 
so forth; and it is only when we come to think that 
the thought of Mr. Lord’s greatness is quite idio- 
syncratic, confined exclusively to Mr. Lord, that 
we are in condition to understand how, in despite 
of his objectiveness, he has failed to convey an 
idea of anything beyond one Mr. William W. Lord. 

From the essay entitled ‘‘Philip Van Artevelde,”’ 
I copy a paragraph which will serve at once to 
exemplify Miss Fuller’s more earnest (declamatory) 
style, and to show the tenor of her prospective 
speculations :— 


SARAH MARGARET FULLER 1ry 


At Chicago I read again “Philip Van Artevelde,” and 
certain passages in it will always be in my mind associated 
with the deep sound of the lake, as heard in the night. I 
used to read a short time at night, and then open the 
blind to look out. The moon would be full upon the 
lake, and the calm breath, pure light, and the deep voice, 
harmonized well with the thought of the Flemish hero. 
When will this country have such a man? It is what she 
needs—no thin Idealist, no coarse Realist, but a man whose 
eye reads the heavens while his feet step firmly on the 
ground, and his hands are strong and dexterous in the use 
of human instruments. A man, religious, virtuous, and— 
Sagacious; a man of universal sympathies, but self-possessed; 
a man who knows the region of emotion, though he is not 
its slave; a man to whom this world is no mere spectacle or 
fleeting shadow, but a great, solemn game, to be played 
with good heed, for its stakes are of eternal value, yet who, 
if his own play be true, heeds not what he loses by the false- 
_ hood of others. A man who lives from the past, yet 
knows that its honey can but moderately avail him; whose 
comprehensive eye scans the present, neither infatuated by 
its golden lures nor chilled by its many ventures; who 
possesses prescience, as the wise man must, but not so far 
as to be driven mad to-day by the gift which discerns 
to-morrow. When there is such a man for America, the 
thought which urges her on will be expressed. 


From what I have quoted a general conception 
of the prose style of the authoress may be gathered. 
Her manner, however, is infinitely varied. It is 
always forcible—but I am not sure that it is always 
anything else, unless I say picturesque. It rather 
indicates than evinces scholarship. Perhaps only 
the scholastic, or, more properly, those accustomed 
to look narrowly at the structure of phrases, would 
be willing to acquit her of ignorance of grammar— 
would be willing to attribute her slovenliness to 
disregard of the shell in anxiety for the kernel; or 
to waywardness, or to affectation, or to blind rever- 
ence for Carlyle—would be able to detect, in her 


118 EDGAR ALLAN POE | 


strange and continual inaccuracies, a capacity for 
the accurate. 


“T cannot sympathize with such an apprehension; the 
spectacle is capable to swallow up all such objects.”’ 

“Tt is fearful, too, to know, as you look, that whatever 
has been swallowed by the cataract, is tke to rise suddenly 
to light.”’ 

“T took our mutual friends to see her.”’ 

“Tt was always obvious that they had nothing in common 
between them.” 

“The Indian cannot be looked at truly except by a poetic 

eye.” 

_ “McKenney’s Tour to the Lakes gives some facts not to 
be met with elsewhere.”’ 

“There is that mixture of culture and rudeness in the 
aspect of things as gives a feeling of freedom,”’ etc., etc., etc. 


These are merely a few, a very few instances, 
taken at random from among a multitude of wilful 
murders committed by Miss Fuller on the American 
of President Polk. She uses, too, the word ‘‘ignore,”’ 
a vulgarity adopted only of late days (and to no 
good purpose, since there is no necessity for it) 
from the barbarisms of the law, and makes no 
scruple of giving the Yankee interpretation to the 
verbs ‘‘witness” and ‘“‘realize,’’ to say nothing of 
‘fuse,’’ as in the sentence, ‘‘I used to read a short 
time at night.” It will not do to say, in defence 
of such words, that in such senses they may be 
found in certain dictionaries—in that of Bolles’, 
for instance;—some kind of ‘‘authority” may be 
found for any kind of vulgarity under the sun. 

In spite of these things, however, and of her 
frequent unjustifiable Carlyleisms, (such as that 
of writing sentences which are no sentences, since, 
to be parsed, reference must be had to sentences 
preceding,) the style of Miss Fuller is one of the very 
best with which Iam acquainted. In general effect, 





SARAH MARGARET FULLER 119 


I know no style which surpasses it. It is singularly 
piquant, vivid, terse, bold, luminous—leaving details 
out of sight, it is everything that a style need be. 

I believe that Miss Fuller has written much poetry, 
although she has published little. That little is 
tainted with the affectation of the transcendentalists, 
(I used this term, of course, in the sense which the 
public of late days seems resolved to give it,) but is 
brimful of the poetic sentiment. Here, for example, 
is something in Coleridge’s manner, of which the 
author of ‘‘GeneVieve” might have had no reason 
to be ashamed :— 


A maiden sat beneath a tree; 
Tear-bedewed her pale cheeks be, 
And she sighed heavily. 


From forth the wood into the light 
A hunter strides with carol light, 
And a glance so bold and bright. 


He careless stopped and eyed the maid: 
“Why weepest thou?’’ he gently said; 
“TI love thee well, be not afraid.”’ 


He takes her hand and leads her on— 
She should have waited there alone, 
For he was not her chosen one. 


He leans her head upon his breast— 
She knew ’twas not her home of rest, 
But, ah, she had been sore distrest. 


The sacred stars looked sadly down; 
The parting moon appeared to frown, 
To see thus dimmed the diamond crown, 


Then from the thicket starts a deer— 
The huntsman, seizing on his spear 
Cries, ‘ Maiden, wait thou for me here,” 


126 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


She sees him vanish into night— 
She starts from sleep in deep affright, 
For it was not her own true knight. 


Though but in dream Gunhilda failed— 
Though but a fancied ill assailed— 
Though she but fancied fault bewailed— 


Yet thought of day makes dream of night; 
She is not worthy of the knight; 
The inmost altar burns not bright. 


If loneliness thou canst not bear— 
Cannot the dragon’s venom dare— 
Of the pure meed thou shouldst despair. 


Now sadder that lone maiden sighs; 
Far bitterer tears profane her eyes; 
Crushed in the dust her heart’s flower lies. 


To show the evident carelessness with which this 
poem was constructed, I have italicized an identical 
rhyme (of about the same force in versification as an 
identical proposition in logic) and two grammatical 
improprieties. To /leanisaneuter verb, and “‘seizing 
on’’ is not properly to be called a pleonasm, merely 
because it is—nothing at all. The concluding line 
is difficult of pronunciation through excess of con- 
sonants. I should have preferred, indeed, the ante- 
penultimate tristich as the finale of the poem. 

The supposition that the book of an author is 
a thing apart from the author’s self, is, I think, ill- 
founded. The soul is a cipher, in the sense of a 
cryptograph; and the shorter a cryptograph is, the 
more difficulty there is in its comprehension—at a 
certain point of brevity it would bid defiance to an 
army of Champollions. And thus he who has 
written very little, may in that little either conceal 
his spirit or convey quite an erroneous idea of it— 





SARAH MARGARET FULLER 121 


of his acquirements, talents, temper, manner, tenor 
and depth (or shallowness) of thought—in a word, 
of his character, of himself. But this is impossible 
with him who has written much. Of such a person 
we get, from his books, not merely a just, but the 
most just representation. Bulwer, the individual, 
personal man, in a green velvet waistcoat and amber 
gloves, is not by any means the veritable Sir Edward 
Lytton, who is discoverable only in ‘‘Ernest Maltra- 
vers,’ where his soul is deliberately and nakedly 
set forth. And who would ever know Dickens by 
looking at him or talking with him, or doing any- 
thing with him except reading his ‘‘Curiosity Shop”’? 
What poet, in especial, but must feel at least the 
better portion of himself more fairly represented 
in even his commonest sonnet, (earnestly written,) 
than in his most elaborate or most intimate person- 
alities? 

I put all this as a general proposition, to which 
Miss Fuller affords a marked exception—to this 
extent, that her personal character and her printed 
book are merely one and the same thing. We get 
access to her soul as directly from the one as from 
the other—no more readily from this than from 
that—easily from either. Her acts are bookish, and 
her books are less thoughts than acts. Her literary 
and her conversational manner are identical. Here 
is a passage from her ‘‘Summer on the Lakes” :— 


The rapids enchanted me far beyond what I expected; 
they are so swift that they cease to seem so—you can think 
only of their beauty. The fountain beyond the Moss 
islands I discovered for myself, and thought it for some 
time an accidental beauty which it would not do to leave, 
lest I might never see it again. After I found it permanent, 
I returned many times to watch the play of its crest. In 
the little’waterfall beyond, Nature seems, as she often does, 
to have made a study for some larger design. She delights 


122 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


in this—a sketch within a sketch—a dream within a dream. 
Wherever we see it, the lines of the great buttress in the 
fragment of stone, the hues of the waterfall, copied in the 
flowers that star its bordering mosses, we are delighted; 
for all the lineaments become fluent, and we mould the 
scene in congenial thought with its genius. 


Now all this is precisely as Miss Fuller would 
speak it. She is perpetually saying just such things 
in just such words. To get the conversational 
woman in the mind’s eye, all that is needed is to 
imagine her reciting the paragraph just quoted: 
but first let us have the personal woman. She is 
of the medium height; nothing remarkable about 
the figure; a profusion of lustrous light hair; eyes 
a bluish gray, full of fire; capacious forehead; the 
mouth when in repose indicates profound sensibility, 
capacity for affection, for love—when moved by a 
slight smile, it becomes even beautiful in the in- 
tensity of this expression; but the upper lip, as if 
impelled by the action of involuntary muscles, 
habitually uplifts itself, conveying the impression 
of a sneer. Imagine, now, a person of this descrip- 
tion looking you at one moment earnestly in the 
face, at the next seeming to look only within her 
own spirit or at the wall; moving nervously every 
now and then in her chair; speaking in a high key, 
but musically, deliberately, (not hurriedly or loudly,) 
with a delicious distinctness of enunciation—speak- 
ing, I say, the paragraph in question, and empha- 
sizing the words which I have italicized, not by 
impulsion of the breath, (as is usual,) but by draw- 
ing them out as long as possible, nearly closing her 
eyes the while—imagine all this, and we have both 
the woman and the authoress before us. 


JAMES LAWSON 123 


JAMES LAWSON 


rR. LAWSON has. published; I--believe, 
only “Giordano,” a tragedy, and two 


volumes entitled’ **Tales» and Sketches 
by a Cosmopolite.” The former was condemned 
(to use a gentle word) some years ago at the Park 
Theatre; and never was condemnation more relig- 
iously deserved: The latter are in so much more 
tolerable than the former, that they contain one 
non-execrable thing—‘‘The Dapper Gentleman’s 
Story’’—in manner, as in title, an imitation of one 
of Irving’s ‘*Tales of a Traveller.”’ 

I mention’ Mr:L:,; however,.not.on- account of 
his literary labors, but because, although a Scotch- 
man,;~he~has’always»-professed...to. have. greatly at 
heart the welfare of. American letters... -He.is much 
inthe society..of authors and booksellers,..converses 
~-fluently, tells a good story, is’of social habits, and, 
with no taste whatever, is quite enthusiastic on all 
topics appertaining to Taste. 


124 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


CAROLINE M. KIRKLAND 


RS. KIRKLAND’S ‘‘'New Home,” pub- 
MI lished under the nom de plume of ‘‘Mary 

Clavers,” wrought an undoubted sensa- 
tion. The cause lay not so much in picturesque 
description, in racy humor, or in animated individual 
portraiture, as in truth and novelty. The west at 
the time was a field comparatively untrodden by 
the sketcher or the novelist. In certain works, 
to be sure, we had obtained brief glimpses of charac- 
ter strange to us sojourners in the civilized east, 
but to Mrs. Kirkland alone we were indebted for — 
our acquaintance with the home and home-life of 
the backwoodsman. With a fidelity and vigor that 
prove her pictures to be taken from the very life, 
she has represented ‘‘scenes” that could have 
occurred only as and where she has described them. 
She has placed before us the veritable settlers of the 
forest, with all their peculiarities, national and 
individual; their free and fearless spirit; their homely 
‘utilitarian views; their shrewd out-looking for self- 
interest; their thrifty care and inventions multiform; 
their coarseness of manner, united with real delicacy 
and substantial kindness when their sympathies 
are called into action—in a word, with all the 
characteristics of the Yankee, in a region where the 
salient points of character are unsmoothed by 
contact with society. So lifelike were her repre- 
sentations that they have been appropriated as 
individual portraits by many who have been dis- 
posed to plead, trumpet-tongued, against what they 


CAROLINE M. KIRKLAND 125 


supposed to be “‘the deep damnation of their taking- 


F oft ?? 


‘‘Forest Life’’ succeeded ‘‘A New Home,” and 
_ was read with equal interest. It gives us, perhaps, 
more of the philosophy of western life, but has the 
same freshness, freedom, piquancy. Of course, 
a truthful picture of pioneer habits could never be 
given in any grave history or essay so well as in the 
form of narration, where each character is permitted 
to develop itself; narration, therefore, was very 
properly adopted by Mrs. Kirkland in both the 
books just mentioned, and even more entirely in 
her later volume, ‘‘Western Clearings.’’ This is 
the title of a collection of tales, illustrative, in 
general, of Western manners, customs, ideas. ‘“‘The 
Land Fever” is a story of the wild days when the 
madness of speculation in land was at its height. 
It is a richly characteristic sketch, as is also ‘‘The 
Ball at Thram’s Huddle.”’ Only those who have 
had the fortune to visit or live in the ‘“‘back settle- 
ments” can enjoy such pictures to the full. ‘‘Chances 
and Changes” and ‘‘Love vs. Aristocracy’’ are more 
regularly constructed tales, with the ‘‘universal 
passion” as the moving power, but colored with 
the glowing hues of the west. ‘‘The Bee Tree”’ 
exhibits a striking but too numerous class among _ 
the settlers, and explains, also, the depth of the 
bitterness that grows out of an unprosperous condi- 
tion in that ‘‘ Paradise of the Poor.” ‘‘Ambuscades” 
and ‘‘Half-Lengths from Life,’’? I remember as two 
piquant sketches to which an annual, a year or two 
ago, was indebted for a most unusual sale among 
the conscious and pen-dreading denizens of the west. 
‘“‘Half-Lengths” turns on the trying subject of caste. 
‘The Schoolmaster’s Progress”’ is full of truth and 
humor. The western pedagogue, the stiff, solitary 


126 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


nondescript figure in the drama of a new settlement, 
occupying a middle position between ‘‘our folks” 
and ‘‘company,” and ‘‘boarding round,”’ is irresis- 
tibly amusing, and cannot fail to be recognised as 
the representative of a class. The occupation, 
indeed, always seems to mould those engaged in it— 
they all soon, like Master Horner, learn to ‘‘know 
well what belongs to the pedagogical character, and 
that facial solemnity stands high on the list of 
indispensable qualifications.’? The spelling-school, 
also, is a ‘‘new country” feature which we owe Mrs. 
Kirkland many thanks for recording. ‘The incidents 
of ‘‘An Embroidered Fact” are singular and pic- 
turesque, but not particularly illustrative of the 
‘“‘Clearings.”” The same may be said of ‘‘Bitter 
Fruits from Chance-Sown Seeds’’; but this abounds 
in capital touches of character: all the horrors of 
the tale are brought about through suspicion of 
pride, an accusation as destructive at the west as 
that of witchcraft in olden times, or the cry of mad 
dog in modern. 

In the way of absolute books, Mrs. Kirkland, I 
believe, has achieved nothing beyond the three 
volumes specified, (with another lately issued by 
Wiley and Putnam,) but she is a very constant 
contributor to the magazines. Unquestionably, 
she is one of our best writers, has a province of her 
own, and in that province has few equals. Her most 
noticeable trait is a certain freshness of style, seem- 
ingly drawn, as her subjects in general, from the 
west. In the second place is to be observed a 
species of wzt, approximating humor, and so inter- 
spersed with pure fun, that ‘‘wit,’’ after all, is 
nothing like a definition of it. To give an example— 
*‘Old Thoughts on the New Year” commences with 
a quotation from Tasso’s *‘Aminte .”— 


CAROLINE M. KIRKLAND 127 


Il mondo invecchia 
E invecchiando intristisce; 


and the following is given as a ‘‘free translation” :— 


The world is growing older 
And wiser day by day; 

Everybody knows beforehand 
What you’re going to say. 

We used to laugh and frolic— 
Now we must behave: 

Poor old Fun is dead and buried— 
Pride dug his grave. 


This, if I am not mistaken, is the only specimen of 
poetry as yet given by Mrs. Kirkland to the world. 
She has afforded us no means of judging in respect 
to her inventive powers, although fancy, and even 
imagination, are apparent in everything she does. 
Her perceptive faculties enable her to describe with 
great verisimilitude. Her mere style is admirable, 
lucid, terse, full of variety, faultlessly pure, and yet 
bold—so bold as to appear heedless of the ordinary 
decora of composition. In even her most reckless 
sentences, however, she betrays the woman of 
refinement, of accomplishment, of unusually thor- 
ough education. There are a great many points 
in which her general manner resembles that of 
Willis, whom she evidently admires. Indeed, it 
would not be difficult to pick out from her works 
an occasional Willisism, not less palpable than 
happy. For example— 

Peaches were like little green velvet butions when George 
was first mistaken for Doctor Beaseley, and before they were 
ripe he, &c. 

And again— 


Mr. Hammond is fortunately settled in our neighborhood, 
for the present at least; and he has the neatest little cottage 
in the world, standing, too, under a very tall oak, which 


#28 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


bends kindly over it, looking like the Princess Glumdalclitch 
inclining her ear to the box which contained her pet 
Gulliver. 


Mrs. Kirkland’s personal manner is an echo of 
her literary one. She is frank, cordial, yet suffi- 
ciently dignified—even bold, yet especially lady- 
like; converses with remarkable accuracy as well 
as fluency; is brilliantly witty, and now and then 
not alittle sarcastic, but ageneral amiability prevails. 

She is rather above the medium height; eyes and 
hair dark; features somewhat small, with no marked 
characteristics, but the whole countenance beams 
with benevolence and intellect. 


/ PROSPER M. WETMORE 129 


PROSPER M. WETMORE 


ago quite a conspicuous position among 

the littérateurs of New York city. His 
name was seen very frequently in ‘‘The Mirror,’ 
and in other similar journals, in connexion with 
brief poems and occasional prose compositions. 
His only publication in volume form, I believe, is 
“The Battle of Lexington and other Poems,” a 
collection of considerable merit, and one which met 
a very cordial reception from the press. 

Much of this cordiality, however, is attributable to 
the personal popularity of the man, to his facility 
in making acquaintances, and his tact in converting 
them into unwavering friends. 

General Wetmore has an exhaustless fund of 
vitality. His energy, activity and indefatigability 
are proverbial, not less than his peculiar sociability. 
These qualities give him unusual influence among 
his fellow-citizens, and have constituted him (as 
precisely the same traits have constituted his friend 
General Morris,).one of a standing committee for 
the regulation of a certain class of city affairs— 
such, for instance, as the getting up a complimentary 
benefit, or a public demonstration of respect for 
some deceased worthy, or a ball and dinner to Mr. 
Irving or Mr. Dickens. 

Mr. Wetmore is not only a General, but Naval 
Officer of the Port of New York, Member of the 
Board of Trade, one of the Council of the Art Union, 
one of the Corresponding Committee of the Histori- 

Vox, V—9 we 


Ors: WETMORE occupied some years 


130 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


cal Society, and of more other committees than I 
can just nowremember. His manners are recherchés, 
courteous—a little in the old school way. He is 
sensitive, punctilious; speaks well, roundly, fluently, 
plausibly, and is skilled in pouring oil upon the 
waters of stormy debate. 

He is, perhaps, fifty years of age, but has a youth- 
ful look; is about five feet eight in height, slender, 
neat, with an air of military compactness; looks 
especially well on horseback. 


EMMA C. EMBURY 131 


EMMA C. EMBURY 


RS. EMBURY is one of the most noted, 
M and certainly one of the most meritorious 

of our female lttérateurs. She has been 
many years before the public—her earliest com- 
positions, I believe, having been contributed to the 
“New York Mirror” under the nom de plume 
‘‘Tanthe.” They attracted very general attention 
at the time of their appearance and materially 
aided the paper. They were subsequently, with 
some other pieces, published in volume form, with 
the title “‘Guido and other Poems.’”’ The book has 
been long out of print. Of late days its author has 
written but little poetry—that little, however, has 
at least indicated a poetic capacity of no common 
order. 

Yet as a poetess she is comparatively unknown, 
her reputation in this regard having been quite 
overshadowed by that which she has acquired as a 
writer of tales. In this latter capacity she has, 
upon the whole, no equal among her sex in America 
—certainly no superior. She is not so vigorous as 
Mrs. Stephens, nor so vivacious as Miss Chubbuck, 
nor so caustic as Miss Leslie, nor so dignified as 
Miss Sedgwick, nor so graceful, fanciful and spzrit- 
uelle as Mrs. Osgood, but is deficient in none of 
the qualities for which these ladies are noted, and 
in certain particulars surpasses them all. Her 
subjects are fresh, if not always vividly original, 
and she manages them with more skill than is 
usually exhibited by our magazinists. She has 


132 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


also much imagination and sensibility, while her 
style is pure, earnest, and devoid of verbiage and ex- 
aggeration. I make a point of reading all tales to 
which I see the name of Mrs. Embury appended. 
The story by which she has attained most reputation 
is ‘‘Constance Latimer, the Blind Girl.” 

Mrs. E. is a daughter of Doctor Manly, an eminent 
physician of New York city. At an early age she 
married a gentleman of some wealth and of educa- 
tion, as well as of tastes akin to her own. She is 
noted for her domestic virtues no less than for liter- 
ary talents and acquirements. 

She is about the medium height; complexion, 
eyes, and hair, light; arched eyebrows; Grecian nose: 
the mouth a fine one, and indicative of firmness; 
the whole countenance pleasing, intellectual, and 
expressive. ‘The portrait in ‘‘Graham’s Magazine” 
for January, 1843, has no resemblance to her 
whatever. 


EPES SARGENT 133 


EPES SARGENT 


R. SARGENT is well known to the public 
~author-of “Velasco, a Tragedy,” 
“The Light..of--the~Light-house; ~with—. 


other Poems,” one or two short nouvelettes, and 
numerous contributions to the periodicals. He was 
also the editor of ‘‘Sargent’s Magazine,’ a monthly 
work, which had the misfortune of falling between 
two stools, never having been able to make up its 
mind whether to be popular with the three or 
dignified with the five dollar journals. It was a 
“happy medium”’ between the two classes, and met 
the fate of all happy media in dying, as well through 
lack of foes as of friends. In medio tutissimus tbis 
is the worst advice in the world for the editor of a 
magazine. Its observance proved the downfall 
of Mr. Lowell and his really meritorious ‘‘ Pioneer.” 

“Velasco” has received some words of com- 
mendation from the author of ‘‘Ion,’” and I am 
ashamed to say, owes most of its home appreciation 
to this circumstance. Mr. Talfourd’s play has, 
itself, little truly dramatic, with much picturesque 
and more poetical value; its author, nevertheless, 
is better entitled to respect as a dramatist than as 
a critic of dramas. ‘‘Velasco,’’....compared.--with 
American tragedies generally, is a good tragedy— 
indeed, an excellent one, but, positively considered, 
its merits are very inconsiderable. It has many 
of the traits of Mrs. Mowatt’s “‘Fashion,’” to which, 
“in its mode of construction, its scenic effects, and 
several other points, it bears as close a resemblance 


134 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


as, in the nature of things, it could very well bear. 
It is by no means improbable, however, that Mrs. 
Mowatt received some assistance from Mr. Sargent 
in the composition of her comedy, or at least was 
guided by his advice in many particulars of 
technicality. 

‘‘Shells and Sea Weeds,” a series of brief poems, 
recording the incidents of a voyage to Cuba, is, I 
think, the best work in verse of its author, and 
evinces a fine fancy, with keen appreciation of the 
beautiful in natural scenery. Mr. Sargent is fond 
of sea-pieces, and paints them with skill, flooding 
them with that warmth and geniality which are 
their character and their due. “‘A Life on the 
Ocean Wave’”’ has attained great popularity, but 
is by no means so good as the less lyrical composi- 
tions, ‘‘A Calm,” ‘‘The Gale,” ‘‘Tropical Weather,” 
and ‘‘A Night Storm at Sea.”’ 

‘‘The Light of the Light-house”’ is a spirited poem, 
with many musical and fanciful passages, well 
expressed. For example— 


But, oh, Aurora’s crimson light, 
That makes the watch-fire dim, 

Is not a more transporting sight 
Than Ellen is to him. 

He pineth not for fields and brooks 
Wild flowers and singing birds, 

For summer smileth in her looks 
And singeth in her words. 


There is something of the Dibdin spirit throughout 
the poem, and, indeed, throughout all the sea poems 
of Mr. Sargent—a little too much of it, perhaps. 

His prose is not quite so meritorious as his poetry. 
He writes—‘‘easily;’-and-is-apt at burlesque—and. 
sarcasm—both rather--broad than original. Mr. 
Sargent has an excellent memory for good hits, and 


EPES SARGENT. 135 


no little dexterity in their application. To those 
who meddle little with books, some of his satirical 
papers must appear brilliant. In a word, he is one 
of the most prominent members of a very extensive 
American family—the men of industry, talent and 
tact. 

In stature he is short—not more than five feet 
five—but well proportioned. His face is a fine 
one; the features regular and expressive. His 
demeanor is very gentlemanly. Unmarried, and 
about thirty years of age. 


136 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD 


RS. OSGOOD, for the last three or four 
M years, has been rapidly attaining dis- 
tinction; and this, evidently, with no 
effort at attaining it. She seems, in fact, to have 
no object in view beyond that of giving voice to 
the fancies or the feelings of the moment. ‘‘Neces- 
sity,’ says the proverb, ‘‘is the mother of Inven- 
tion”’; and the invention of Mrs. O., at least, springs 
plainly from necessity—from the necessity of inven- 
tion. Not to write poetry—not to act it, think it, 
dream it, and be it, is entirely out of her power. | 
It may be questioned whether with more industry, 
more method, more definite purpose, more ambition, 
Mrs. Osgood would have made a more decided 
impression on the public mind. She might, upon 
the whole, have written better poems; but the 
chances are that she would have failed in conveying 
so vivid and so just an idea of her powers as a poet. 
The warm abandonnement of her style—that charm 
which now so captivates—is but a portion and a 
consequence of her unworldly nature—of her disre- 
gard of mere fame; but it affords us glimpses, which 
we could not otherwise have obtained, of a capacity 
for accomplishing what she has not accomplished, 
and in all probability never will. In the world of 
poetry, however, there is already more than enough 
of uncongenial ambition and pretence. 
Mrs. Osgood has taken no care whatever of her 
literary fame. A great number of her finest com- 
positions, both in verse and prose, have been written 


FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD 137 


anonymously, and are now lying perdus about the 
country, in out-of-the-way nooks and _ corners. 
Many a goodly reputation has been reared upon a 
far more unstable basis than her unclaimed and 
uncollected ‘‘fugitive pieces.”’ 

Her first volume, I believe, was published, seven 
or eight years ago, by Edward Churton, of London, 
during the residence of the poetess in that city. 
I have now lying before me a second edition of it, 
dated 1842—a beautifully printed book, dedicated 
to the Reverend Hobard Caunter. It contains a 
number of what the Bostonians call ‘‘juvenile”’ 
poems, written when Mrs. O., (then Miss Locke,) 
could not have been more than thirteen, and evincing 
unusual precocity. The leading piece is ‘‘Elfrida, 
a Dramatic Poem,” but in many respects well. 
entitled to the appellation, ‘‘drama.”’ I allude 
chiefly to the passionate expression of particu‘ar 
portions, to delineation of character, and to occa- 
sional scenic effect:—in construction, or plot—in 
general conduct and plausibility, the play fails; 
comparatively, of course—for the hand of genius 
is evinced throughout. 

The story is the well known one of Edgar, Elfrida, 
and Earl Athelwood. ‘The king, hearing of Elfrida’s 
extraordinary beauty, commissions his favorite, 
Athelwood, to visit her and ascertain if report 
speaks truly of her charms. The earl, becoming 
himself enamored, represents the lady as anything 
but beautiful or agreeable. The king is satisfied. 
Athelwood soon afterward woos and weds Elfrida— 
giving Edgar to understand that the heiress’ wealth 
is the object. The true state of the case, however, 
is betrayed by an enemy;.and the monarch resolves 
to visit the earl at his castle and to judge for himself. 
Hearing of this resolve, Athelwood, in despair, 


138 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


confesses to his wife his duplicity, and entreats her 
to render null as far as possible the effect of her 
charms by dressing with unusual plainness. This 
the wife promises to do; but, fired with ambition 
and resentment at the wrong done her, arrays her- 
self in her most magnificent and becoming costume. 
The king is charmed, and the result is the destruc- 
tion of Athelwood and the elevation of Elfrida to 
the throne. 

These incidents are well adapted to dramatic 
purposes, and with more of that art which Mrs. 
Osgood does not possess, she might have woven 
them into a tragedy which the world would not 
willingly let die. As it is, she has merely succeeded 
in showing what she might, should, and could have 
done, and yet, unhappily, did not. 

The character of Elfrida is the bright point of the 
play. Her beauty and consciousness of it—her 
indignation and uncompromising ambition—are de- 
picted with power. There is a fine blending of 
the poetry of passion and the passion of poetry, 
in the lines which follow: 





Why even now he bends 

In courtly reverence to some mincing dame, 
Haply the star of Edgar’s festival, 

While I, with this high heart and queenly form, 
Pine in neglect and solitude. Shall it be? 

Shall I not rend my fetters and be free? 
Ay!—be the cooing turtle-dove content, 

Safe in her own loved nest!—the eagle soars 

On restless plumes to meet the imperial sun, 
And Edgar is my day-star in whose light 

This heart’s proud wings shall yet be furled to rest, 
Why wedded I with Athelwood? For this? 
No!—even at the altar when I stood— 

My hand in his, his gaze upon my cheek— 

I did forget his presence and tke scene; 





FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD 139 


A gorgeous vision rose before mine eyes 

Of power and pomp and regal pageantry; 

A king was at my feet and, as he knelt, 

I smiled and, turning, met—a husband’s kiss, 
But still I smiled—for in my guilty soul 

I blessed him as the being by whose means 

I should be brought within my idol’s sphere— 
My haughty, glorious, brave, impassioned Edgart 
Well I remember when these wondering eyes 
Beheld him first. I was a maiden then— 

A dreaming child—but from that thrilling hour 
I’ve been a queen tn visions! 


Very similar, but even more glowing, is the love- 
inspired eloquence of Edgar. 


Earth hath no language, love, befitting thee, 

For tts own children tt hath pliant speech; 

And mortals know to call a blossom fatr, 

A wavelet graceful, and a jewel rich; 

But thou!—oh, teach me, sweet, the angel tongue 
They talked in Heaven ere thou didst leave its bowers 
To bloom below! 


To this Elfrida replies— 


If Athelwood should hear thee! 
And to this, Edgar— 


Name not the felon knave to me, Elfrida! 
My soul is flame whene’er I think of him. 
Thou lovest him not?—oh, say thou dost not love him! 


The answer of Elfrida at this point is profoundly 
true to nature, and would alone suffice to assure 
any critic of Mrs. Osgood’s dramatic talent. 


When but a child I saw thee in my dreams! 


The woman’s soul here shrinks from the direct 

avowal of want of love for her husband, and flies 
to poetry and appeals to fate by way of excusing 
that infidelity which is at once her glory and her 
shame. 


140 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


In general, the ‘‘situations” of ‘‘Elfrida” are 
improbable or ultra-romantic, and its incidents 
unconsequential, seldom furthering the business 
of the play. The dénouement is feeble, and its 
moral of very equivocal tendency indeed—but I 
have already shown that it is the especial office 
neither of poetry nor of the drama, to inculcate 
truth, unless incidentally. Mrs. Osgood, however, 
although she has unquestionably failed in writing 
a good play, has, even in failing, given indication of 
dramatic power. The great tragic element, passion, 
breathes in every line of her composition, and had 
she but the art, or the patience, to model or control 
it, she might be eminently successful as a playwright. 
I am justified in these opinions not only by “‘ Elfrida,’ 
but by ‘‘Woman’s Trust, a Dramatic Sketch,” 
included, also, in the English edition. 


A Masked Ball. Madelon and a Stranger in a Recess. 


Mad.—Why hast thou led me here? 

My friends may deem it strange—unmaidenly, 
This lonely converse with an unknown mask, 
Yet in thy voice there is a thrilling power 
That makes me love to linger. It is like 

The tone of one far distant—only his 

Was gayer and more soft 

Strang. Sweet Madelon: 

Say thou wilt smile upon the passionate love 
That thou alone canst waken! Let me hope! 


Mad.—Hush! hush! I may not hear thee. Know’st thou not 
I am betrothed? 

Strang.—Alas! too well I know; 

But I could tell thee such a tale of him— 

Thine early love—’twould fire those timid eyes 

With lightning pride and anger—curl that lip— 

That gentle lip to passionate contempt 

For man’s light falsehood. Even now he bends—- 

Thy Rupert bends o’er one as fair as thou, 





FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD 141 


In fond affection. Even now his heart— 
Mad.—Doth my eye flash?—doth my lip curl with scorn? 
’Tis scorn of thee, thou perjured stranger, not— 
Oh, not of him, the generous and the true! 

Hast thou e’er seen my Rupert?—hast thou met 
Those proud and fearless eyes that never quailed, 
As Falsehood quails, before another’s glance— 

As thine even now are shrinking from mine own— 
The spirit beauty of that open brow— 

The noble head—the free and gallant step— 

The lofty mein whose majesty is won 

From inborn honor—hast thou seen all this? 

And darest thou speak of faithlessness and him 

In the same idle breath? Thou little know’st 

The strong confiding of a woman’s heart, 

When woman loves as—I do. Speak no more! 
Strang.—Deluded girl! I tell thee he is false— 
False as yon fleeting cloud! 

Mad. True as the sun! 
Strang.—The very wind less wayward than his heart! 
Mad.—The forest oak less firm! He loved me not 
For the frail rose-hues and the fleeting light 

Of youthful loveliness—ah, many a cheek 

Of softer bloom, and many a dazzling eye 

More rich than mine may win my wanderer’s gaze, 
He loved me for my love, the deep, the fond— 
For my unfaltering truth; he cannot find— 

Rove where he will—a heart that beats for him 
With such intense, absorbing tenderness— 

Such idolizing constancy as mine. 

Why should he change, then?—I am still the same. 
Strang.—Sweet infidel! wilt thou have ruder proof? 
Rememberest thou a little golden case 

Thy Rupert wore, in which a gem was shrined? 

A gem I would not barter for a world— 

An angel face; its sunny wealth of hair 

In radiant ripples bathed the graceful throat 

And dimpled shoulders; round the rosy curve 

Of the sweet mouth a smile seemed wandering ever; 
While in the depths of azure fire that gleamed 
Beneath the drooping lashes, slept a world 

Of eloquent meaning, passionate yet pure— 
Dreamy—-subdued—but oh, how beautifuli 


142 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


A look of timid, pleading tenderness 

That should have been a talisman to charm 

His restless heart for aye. Rememberest thou? 

Mad.—(tmpatiently.) I do—I do remember—’twas my own 

He prized it as his life—I gave it him— 

What of it!—speak! 

Strang.—(showing a minzature,) Lady, behold that gift 

Mad.—(clasping her hands) Merciful Heaven! is my Rupert 
dead? 

(After a pause, during which she seems overwhelmed with 
agony) 

How died he?—when?—oh, thou wast by his side 

In that last hour and I was far away! 

My blessed love'—give me that token!—speak]! 

What message sent he to his Madelon? 

Strang.—(Supporting her and strongly agitated,) 

He is not dead, dear lady!—grieve not thus! 

Mad.—He 1s not false, sir stranger! 

Strang. For thy sake, 

Would he were worthier! One other proof 

I'll give thee, loveliest! if thou lov’st him still, 

I'll not believe thee woman. Listen, then! 

A faithful lover breathes not of his bliss 

To other ears, Wilt hear a fable, lady? 


Here the stranger details some incidents of the 
first wooing of Madelon by Rupert, and concludes 
with, 


Lady, my task is o’er—dost doubt me still? 

Mad. Doubt thee, my Rupert! ah, I know thee now, 
Fling by that hateful mask!—let me unclasp it! 
No! thou wouldst not betray thy Madelon. 


The ‘‘Miscellaneous Poems” of the volume- 
many of them written in childhood—are, of course, 
various in character and merit. ‘‘The Dying 
Rosebud’s Lament,” although by no means one of 
the best, will very well serve to show the earlier 
and most characteristic manner of the poetess: 


FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD 143 


Ah, me!—ah wo is me 
That I should perish now, 
With the dear sunlight just let in 
Upon my balmy brow. 


My leaves, instinct with glowing life, 
Were quivering to unclose: 

My happy heart with love was rife— 
I was almost a rose. 


Nerved by a hope, warm, rich, intense, 
Already I had risen 

Above my cage’s curving fence— 
My green and graceful prison. 


My pouting lips, by Zephyr pressed, 
Were just prepared to part, 

And whispered to the wooing wind 
The rapture of my heart. 


In new-born fancies revelling, 
My mossy cell half riven, 

Each thrilling leaflet seemed a wing 
To bear me into Heaven. 


How oft, while yet an infant-flower, 
My crimson cheek I’ve laid 

Against the green bars of my bower, 
Impatient of the shade. 


And, pressing up and peeping through 
Its small but precious vistas, 

Sighed for the lovely light and dew 
That blessed my elder sisters. 


I saw the sweet breeze rippling o’er 
Their leaves that loved the play, 

Though the light thief stole all the store 
Of dew-drop gems away. 


I thought how happy I should be 
Such diamond wreaths to wear, 
And frolic with a rose’s glee 
With sunbeam, bird and air, 


144 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Ah, me!—ah, wo is me, that I, 
Ere yet my leaves unclose, 

With all my wealth of sweets must die 
Before I am a rose! 


The poetical reader will agree with me that few 
things have ever been written (by any poet, at any 
age,) more delicately fanciful than the passages 
italicized—and yet they are the work of a girl not 
more than fourteen years of age. ‘The clearness 
and force of expression, and the nice appositeness 
of the overt and insinuated meaning, are, when we 
consider the youth of the writer, even more remark- 
able than the fancy. 

I cannot speak of Mrs. Osgood’s poems. without 
a strong propensity to ring the changes upon the 
indefinite word ‘‘grace”’ and its derivatives. About. 
everything she writes we perceive this indescribable 
charm—of which, perhaps, the elements are a vivid 
fancy and a quick sense of the proportionate. 
Grace, however, may be most satisfactorily defined 
as “‘a term applied, in despair, to that class of the 
impressions of Beauty which admit of no analysis.” 
It is in this irresoluble effect that Mrs. Osgood excels 
any poetess of her country—and it is to this easily 
appreciable effect that her popularity is owing. 
Nor is she more graceful herself than a lover of the 
graceful, under whatever guise it is presented to 
her consideration. The sentiment renders itself 
manifest, in innumerable instances, as well through- 
out her prose as her poetry. Whatever be her 
theme, she at once extorts from it its whole essenti- 
ality of grace. Fanny Ellsler has been often lauded; 
true poets have sung her praises; but we look in vain 
for anything written about her, which so distinctly 
and vividly paints her to the eye as the half dozen 


FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD i4§ 


quatrains which follow. They are to be found in 
the English volume: 


She comes!—the spirit of the dance! 
And but for those large eloquent eyes, 

Where passion speaks in every glance, 
She’d seem a wanderer from the skies. 


So light that, gazing breathless there, 
Lest the celestial dream should go, 

You'd think the music in the air 
Waved the fair viston to and fro. 


Or think the melody’s sweet flow 
Within the radiant creature played, 

And those soft wreathing arms of snow 
And white sylph feet the music made. 


Now gliding slow with dreamy grace, 
Her eyes beneath their lashes lost, 

Now motionless, with lifted face, 

And small hands on her bosom crossed. 


And now with flashing eyes she springs— 
Her whole bright figure raised in atr, 
As tf her soul had spread its wings 
And potsed her one wild instant there! 


She spoke not—but, so richly fraught 
With language are her glance and smile 
That, when the curtain fell, I thought 
She had been talking all the while. 


“2S ee 


This is, indeed, poetry—and of the most unques- 
tionable kind—poetry truthful in the proper sense— 
that is to say, bréathing of Nature. ‘There is here 
nothing forced or artificial—no hardly sustained 
enthusiasm. The poetess speaks because she feels, 
and what she feels; but then what she feels is felt 
only by the truly poetical. The thought in the last 
line of the quatrain will not be so fully appreciated 

VoL. V—i10 


146 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


by the reader as it should be; for latterly it has been 
imitated, plagiarized, repeated ad infinitum:—but 
the other passages italicized have still left them all 
their original effect. The idea in the last two lines 
is exquisitely ndzve and natural; that in the last 
two lines of the second quatrain, beautiful beyond 
measure; that of the whole fifth quatrain, magnifi- 
cent—unsurpassed in the entire compass of American 
poetry. It is instinct with the noblest poetical 
requisite—imagination. 

Of the same trait I find, to my surprise, one of 
the best exemplifications among the ‘Juvenile 
Rhymes.” 


For Fancy is a fairy that can hear, 

Ever, the melody of Nature’s voice 

And see all lovely visions that she will. 

She drew a picture of a beauteous bird 

With plumes of radiant green and gold inwoven, 
Bantshed from tts beloved resting place, 

And fluttering in vain hope from tree to tree, 
And bade us think how, like it, the sweet season 
From one bright shelter to another fled— 

First from the maple waved her emerald pinions, 
But lingered still upon the oak and elm, 

Tull, frightened by rude breezes even from them, 
With mournful sigh she moaned her sad farewell, 


The little poem called ‘‘The Music Box” has 
been as widely circulated as any of Mrs Osgood’s 
compositions. The melody and harmony of this 
jeu d’esprit are perfect, and there is in it a rich tint 
of that epigrammatism for which the poetess is 
noted. Some of the ¢ntentional epigrams inter- 
spersed through the works are peculiarly happy. 
Here is one which, while replete with the rarest 
“spirit of point,’’ is yet something more than pointed, 


FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD 149 


TO AN ATHEIST POET 
Lovest thou the music of the sea? 
Callest thou the sunshine bright? 
His voice is more than melody— 
His smile is more than light. 


Here again, is something very similar: 


Fanny shuts her smiling eyes, 
Then because she cannot see, 

Thoughtless simpleton! she cries 
“Ah! you can’t see me.” 


Fanny’s like the sinner vain 
Who, with spirit shut and dim, 
Thinks, because he sees not Heaven, 
Heaven beholds not him. 


Is it not a little surprising, however, that a writer 
capable of so much precision and finish as the author 
of these epigrams must be, should have failed to see 
how much of force is lost in the inversion of ‘‘the 
sinner vain?’’? Why not have written ‘‘Fanny’s 
like the silly sinner?’’—or, if ‘‘silly” be thought too 
jocose, ‘‘the blinded sinner?” The rhythm, at 
the same time, would thus be much improved by 
bringing the lines, 


Fanny’s like the silly sinner, 
Thinks because he sees not Heaven, 


into exact equality. 

In mingled epigrams and espieglerie Mrs. Osgood 
is even more especially at home. I have seldom 
seen anything in this way more happily done than 
the song entitled ‘‘If he can.” 

‘‘The Unexpected Declaration”’ 1s, perhaps, even 
a finer specimen of the same manner. It is one of 
that class of compositions which Mrs. Osgood has 


148 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


made almost exclusively her own. Had I seen it 
without her name, I should have had no hesitation 
in ascribing it to her; for there is no other person— 
in America certainly—who does anything of a 
similar kind with anything like a similar piquancy. 

The point of this poem, however, might have 
been sharpened, and the polish increased in lustre, 
by the application of the emory of brevity. From 
what the lover says much might well have been 
omitted; and I should have preferred leaving out 
altogether the autorial comments; for the story is 
fully told without them. The ‘‘Why do you weep?”’ 
“Why do you frown?” and ‘‘Why do you smile?” 
supply all the imagination requires; to supply more 
than it requires, oppresses and offends it. Nothing 
more deeply grieves it—or more vexes the true 
taste in general, than hyperism of any kind. In 
Germany, Wohlgeborn is a loftier title than Edelge- 
born; and in Greece, the thrice-victorious at the 
Olympic games could claim a statue of the size of life, 
while he who had conquered but once was entitled 
only to a colossal one. 

The English collection of which I speak was 
entitled ‘‘A Wreath of Wild Flowers from New 
England.” It met with a really cordial reception 
in Great Britain—was favorably noticed by the 
“‘Literary Gazette,” ‘‘Times,’’ ‘Atlas,’ ‘‘Monthly 
Chronicle,” and especially by the ‘‘Court Journal,” 
“The Court and Ladies’ Magazine,’ ‘‘La Belle 
Assemblée,’’ and other similar works. ‘‘We have 
long been familiar,” says the high authority of the 
*“‘Literary Gazette,” ‘‘with the name of our fair 
AULROrN lin Our expectations have been ful- 
filled, and we have here a delightful gathering of 
the sweetest of wild flowers, all looking as fresh 
and beautiful as if they had grown in the richest 


FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD 149 


of English pasture in place of having been ‘nursed 
by the cataract.’ True, the wreath might have 
been improved with a little more care—a trifling 
attention or two paid to the formation of it. A 
stalk here and there that obtrudes itself between 
the bells of the flowers, might have become so inter- 
woven as to have been concealed, and the whole 
have looked as if it had grown in that perfect and 
beautiful form. Though, after all, we are perhaps 
too chary; for in Nature every leaf is not ironed out 
to a form, nor propped up with a wiry precision, 
but blown and ruffled by the refreshing breezes, and 
looking as careless and easy and unaffected as a 
child that bounds along with its silken locks tossed 
to and fro just as the wind uplifts them. Page 
after page of this volume have we perused with a 
feeling of pleasure and admiration.” The ‘“‘Court 
Journal”? more emphatically says:—‘‘Her wreath 
is one of violets, sweet-scented, pure and modest; 
so lovely that the hand that wove it should not 
neglect additionally to enrich it by turning her love 
and kindness to things of larger beauty. Some of 
the smaller lyrics in the volume are perfectly beautiful 
—beautiful in their chaste and exquisite simplicity 
and the perfect elegance of their composition.” 
In fact, there was that about ‘‘The Wreath of Wild 
Flowers’’—that inexpressible grace of thought and 
manner—which never fails to find ready echo in the 
hearts of the aristocracy and refinement of Great 
Britain;—and it was here especially that Mrs. 
Osgood found welcome. Her husband’s merits 
as an artist had already introduced her into distin- 
guished society, (she was petted, in especial, by Mrs. 
Norton and Rogers,) but the publication of her 
poems had at once an evidently favorable effect 
upon his fortunes. His pictures were placed in a 


150 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


most advantageous light by her poetical and con- 
versational ability. 

Messrs. Clarke and Austin, of New York, have 
lately issued another, but still a very uncomplete 
collection of ‘‘Poems by Frances S. Osgood.” In 
general, it includes by no means the best of her 
works. ‘‘The Daughter of Herodias’”—one of her 
longest compositions, and a very noble poem, putting 
me in mind of the best efforts of Mrs. Hemans—is 
omitted :—it is included, however, in the last edition 
of Doctor Griswold’s ‘‘ Poets and Poetry of America.” 
In Mrs. C. and A.’s collection there occur, too, very 
many of those half sentimental, half allegorical 
compositions of which, at one period, the authoress 
seemed to be particularly fond—for the reason, 
perhaps, that they afforded her good opportunity 
for the exercise of her ingenuity and epigrammatic 
talent:—no poet, however, can admit them to be 
poetry at all. Still, the volume contains some 
pieces which enable us to take a new view of the 
powers of the writer. A few additional years, with 
their inevitable sorrow, appear to have stirred the 
depths of her heart. We see less of frivolity—less 
of vivacity—more of tenderness—earnestness—even 
passion—and far more of the true imagination as 
distinguished from its subordinate, fancy. The 
one prevalent trait, grace, alone distinctly remains. 
‘The Spirit, of Poetry,’’ ‘To, Sybil,”) ‘The: Bigge 
of the Callitriche,” and ‘‘The Child and its Angel- 
Playmate,” would do honor to any of our poets. 
‘‘She Loves Him Yet,” nevertheless, will serve, 
better than either of these poems, to show the 
alteration of manner referred to. It isnot onlyryth- 
mically perfect, but it evinces much originality in its 
structure. The verses commencing, ‘‘Yes, lower 
to the level,’ are in a somewhat similar tone, 


FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD 151 


but are more noticeable for their terse energy of 
expression. 

In not presenting to the public at one view all 
that she has written in verse, Mrs. Osgood has 
incurred the risk of losing that credit to which she 
is entitled on the score of versatility—of variety 
in invention and expression. ‘There is scarcely a 
form of poetical composition in which she has not 
made experiment; and there is none in which she 
has not very happily succeeded. Her defects are 
chiefly negative and by no means numerous. Her 
versification is sometimes exceedingly good, but 
more frequently feeble through the use of harsh 
consonants, and such words as ‘‘thou’dst”’ for ‘‘thou 
wouldst,’’ with other unnecessary contractions, inver- 
sions, and obsolete expressions. Her imagery is 
often mixed;—indeed it is rarely otherwise. The 
epigrammatism of her conclusions gives to her 
poems, as wholes, the air of being more skilfully 
constructed than they really are. On the other 
hand, we look in vain throughout her works for 
an offence against the finer taste, or against decorum 
—for a low thought or a platitude. A happy refine- 
ment—an instinct of the pure and delicate—is one 
of her most noticeable excellencies. She may be 


properly commended, too, for originality of poetic 


— eer 


invention, whether in the conception of a theme or 
in the manner of treating it. Consequences of this 
trait are her point and piquancy. Fancy and 
niiveté appear in all she writes. Regarding the 
loftier merits, I am forced to speak of her in more 
measured terms. She has occasional passages of 


_ true imagination—but scarcely the glowing, vigorous, 


and sustained ideality of Mrs. Maria Brooks—or 


even, in general, the less ethereal elevation of Mrs. 


| 
| 


Welby. In that indescribable something, however, 


152 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


which, for want of a more definite term, we aré 
accustomed to call “‘grace’’—that charm so magical, 
because at once so shadowy and so potent—that 
Will o’ the Wisp which, in its supreme development, 
may be said to involve nearly all that is valuable 
in poetry—she has, unquestionably, no rival among - 
her countrywomen. 

Of pure prose—of prose proper—she has, perhaps, 
never written a line in her life. Her usual magazine 
papers are a class by themselves. She begins with 
a resolute effort at being sedate—that is to say, 
sufficiently prosaic and matter-of-fact for the pur- 
pose of a legend or an essay; but, after a few sen- 
tences, we behold uprising the leaven of the Muse; 
then, with a flourish and some vain attempts at 
repression, a scrap of verse renders itself manifest; 
then comes a little poem outright; then another and 
another and another, with impertinent patches of 
prose in between—until at length the mask is thrown 
fairly off and far away, and the whole article—sings. 

Upon the whole, I have spoken of Mrs. Osgood 
so much in detail, less on account of what she has 
actually done than on account of what I perceive 
in her the ability to do. 

In character she is ardent, sensitive, impulsive— 
the very soul of truth and honor; a worshipper of 
the beautiful, with a heart so radically artless as 
to seem abundant in art; universally admired, 
respected, and beloved. In person, she is about 
the medium height, slender even to fragility, graceful 
whether in action or repose; complexion usually 
pale; hair black and glossy; eyes a clear, luminous 
erey, large, and with singular capacity for expression. 


LYDIA M. CHILD 153 


LYDIA M. CHILD 


RS. CHILD has acquired a just celebrity 
M by many compositions of high merit, 
the most noticeable of which are ‘‘ Hobo- 
mok,” ‘‘ Philothea,’”’ and a *‘ History of the Condition 
of Women.” ‘‘Philothea,’’ in especial, is written 
with great vigor, and, as a classical romance, is not 
far inferior to the ‘‘Anacharsis” of Barthelemi;— 
its style is a model for purity, chastity, and ease. 
Some of her magazine papers are distinguished for 
graceful and brilliant tmaginatton—a quality rarely 
noticed in our countrywomen. She continues to 
write a great deal for the monthlies and other 
journals, and invariably writes well. Poetry she 
has not often attempted, but I make no doubt that 
in this she would excel. It seems, indeed, the 
legitimate province of her fervid and fanciful nature. 
I quote one of her shorter compositions, as well 
to instance (from the subject) her intense apprecia- 
tion of genius in others as to exemplify the force of 
her poetic expression :— 


MARIUS AMID THE RUINS OF CARTHAGE. 


Pillars are fallen at thy feet, 
Fanes quiver in the air, 
A prostrate city is thy seat, 

And thou alone art there. 


No change comes o’er thy noble brow, 
Though ruin is around thee; 

Thine eyebeam burns as proudly now 
As when the laurel crowned thee. 


154 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


It cannot bend thy lofty soul 
Though friends and fame depart~— 

The car of Fate may o’er thee roll 
Nor crush thy Roman heart, 


And genius hath electric power 
Which earth can never tame; 

Bright suns may scorch and dark clouds lower, 
Its flash is still the same. 


The dreams we loved in early life 
May melt like mist away; 

High thoughts may seem, ’mid passion’s strife, 
Like Carthage in decay; 


And proud hopes in the human heart 
May be to ruin hurled, 

Like mouldering monuments of art 
Heaped on a sleeping world; 


Yet there is something will not die 
Where life hath once been fair; 

Some towering thoughts still rear on high, 
Some Roman lingers there. 


Mrs. Child, casually observed, has nothing particu- 
larly striking in her personal appearance. One 
would pass her in the street a dozen times without 
notice. She is low in stature and slightly framed. 
Her complexion is florid; eyes and hair are dark; 
features in general diminutive. The expression of 
her countenance, when animated, is highly intellec- 
tual. Her dress is usually plain, not even neat— 
anything but fashionable. Her bearing needs excite- 
ment to impress it with life and dignity. She is of 
that order of beings who are themselves only on 
‘“‘sreat occasions.” Her husband is still living. 
She has no children. I need scarcely add that she 
has always been distinguished for her energetic 
and active philanthropy. 


THOMAS DUNN BROWN 155 


THOMAS DUNN BROWN 


this gentleman’s nom de plume* appended, 


I HAVE seen one or two scraps of verse with 
which had considerable merit. For example: 
A sound melodious shook the breeze 
When thy beloved name was heard: 
Such was the music in the word 
Its dainty rhythm the pulses stirred 
But passed forever joys like these. 
There is no joy, no light, no day; 
But black despair and night al-way 
And thickening gloom: 
And this, Azthene, is my doom, 


Was it for this, for weary years, 
I strove among the sons of men, 
And by the magic of my pen— 
_ Just sorcery—walked the lion’s den 
Of slander void of tears and fears— 
And all for thee? For thee! alas, 
As is the image on a glass 
So baseless seems, 
Azthene, all my early dreams. 


I must confess, however, that I do not appreciate 
the ‘‘dainty rhythm” of such a word as ‘‘Azthene,” 
and, perhaps, there is some taint of egotism in the 
passage about ‘‘the magic” of Mr. Brown’s pen. 
Let us be charitable, however, and set all this down 
under the head of the pure imagination or invention 
—the first of poetical requisites. The tnexcusable 


*Thomas Dunn English. 


156 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


sin of Mr. Brown is imitation—if this be not too 
mild a term. When Barry Cornwall, for example, 
sings about a “‘dainty rhythm,’’ Mr. Brown forth- 
with, in B flat, hoots about it too. He has taken, 
however, his most unwarrantable liberties in the 
way of plagiarism, with Mr. Henry B. Hirst, of 
Philadelphia—a poet whose merits have not yet 
been properly estimated. 

I place Mr. Brown, to be sure, on my list of 
literary people not on account of his poetry, (which 
I presume he himself is not weak enough to estimate 
very highly,) but on the score of his having edited, 
for several months, ‘‘with the aid of numerous 
collaborators,” a magazine called ‘‘The Aristidean.”’ 
This work, although professedly a ‘‘monthly,” was 
issued at irregular intervals, and was unfortunate, 


I fear, in not attaining at any period more than 


about fifty subscribers. 

Mr. Brown has at least that amount of talent 
which would enable him to succeed in his father’s 
profession—that of a ferryman on the Schuylkill— 
but the fate of ‘‘The Aristidean”’ should indicate 
to him that, to prosper in any higher walk of life, 


he must apply himself to study. No spectacle 
can be more ludicrous than that of a man without — 


the commonest school education, busying himself 
in attempts to instruct mankind on topics of polite 
literature. The absurdity, in such cases, does not 
lie merely in the ignorance displayed by the would- 
be instructor, but in the transparency of the shifts 
by which he endeavors to keep this ignorance con- 
cealed. The ‘‘editor of the Aristidean,”’ for example, 
was not the public laughing-stock throughout the 
five months of his magazine’s existence, so much 
on account of writing ‘‘lay’”’ for ‘‘lie,” ‘‘went” for 
“gone,” ‘“set’’ forinisit,)éte,; etey or for coup 


THOMAS DUNN BROWN 157 


nouns in the plural with verbs in the singular—as 
when he writes, above, 





so baseless seems, 
Azthene, all my earthly dreams— 


he was not, I say, laughed at so much on account 
of his excusable deficiencies in English grammar 
(although an editor should undoubtedly be able 
to write his own name).as on account of the perti- 
nacity with which he exposed his weakness, in 
lamenting the ‘‘typographical blunders” which so 
unluckily would creep into his work. He should 
have reflected that there is not in all America a 
proof-reader so blind as to permit such errors to 
escape him. The rhyme, for instance, in the matter 
of the ‘‘dreams”’ that ‘‘seems,’’ would have dis- 
tinctly shown even the most uneducated printers’ 
devil that he, the devil, had no right to meddle with 
so obviously an intentional peculiarity. 

Were I writing merely for American readers, I 
should not, of course, have introduced Mr. Brown’s 
name in this book. With us, grotesqueries such as 
‘‘The Aristidean”’ and its editor, are not altogether 
unparalleled, and are sufficiently well understood— 
but my purpose is to convey to foreigners some idea 
of a condition of literary affairs among us, which 
otherwise they might find it difficult to comprehend 
or to conceive. That Mr. Brown’s blunders are 
really such as I have described them—that I have 
not distorted their character or exaggerated their 
grossness in any respect—that there existed in New 
York, for some months, as conductor of a magazine 
that called itself the organ of the Tyler party, and 
was even mentioned, at times, by respectable papers, 
a man who obviously never went to school, and was 
so profoundly ignorant as not to know that he could 


158 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


not spell—are serious and positive facts—uncolored 
in the slightest degree—demonstrable, in a word, 
upon the spot, by reference to almost any editorial 
sentence upon any page of the magazine in question. 
But a single instance will suffice:—Mr. Hirst, in one 
of his poems, has the lines, 


Oh Odin! ’twas pleasure—’twas passion to see 
Her serfs sweep like wolves on a lambkin like me. 


At page 200 of ‘‘The Aristidean”’ for September, 
1845, Mr. Brown, commenting on the English of 
the passage, says:—‘‘This lambkin might have used 
better language than ‘lzke me’—unless he intended 
it for a specimen of choice Choctaw, when it may, 
for all we know to the contrary, pass muster.” It 
is needless, I presume, to proceed farther in a search 
for the most direct proof possible or conceivable, | 
of the ignorance of Mr. Brown—who, in similar 
cases, invariably writes—‘‘like I.” 

In an editorial announcement on page 242 of 
the same ‘‘number,” he says:—‘‘This and the three 
succeeding numbers brings the work up to January 
and with the two numbers previously published 
makes up a volume or half year of numbers.” But 
enough of this absurdity:—Mr. Brown had, for the 
motto on his magazine cover, the words of Richelieu, 





Men call me cruel; 
I am not:—I am just. 


Here the two monosyllables ‘‘an ass” should 
have been appended. They were no doubt omitted 
through ‘‘one of those d———d typographical blun- 
ders” which, through life, have been at once the 
bane and the antidote of Mr. Brown. 

I make these remarks in no spirit of unkindness. 
Mr. B. is yet young—certainly not more than thirty- 


THOMAS DUNN BROWN 159 


eight or nine—and might readily improve himself 
at points where he is most defective. No one of 
any generosity would think the worse of him for 
- getting private instruction. 

I do not personally know him. About his 
appearance there is nothing very remarkable— 
except that he exists in a perpetual state of vacilla- 
tion between mustachio and goatee. In character, 
a windbeutel, 


160 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


ELIZABETH BOGART 


ISS BOGART has been for many years 
M before the public as a writer of poems 

and tales (principally the former) for 
the periodicals, having made her debé#t as a con- 
tributor to the original ‘‘ New York Mirror.’’ Doctor 
Griswold, in a foot-note appended to one of her 
poems quoted in his ‘‘Poets and Poetry,” speaks 
of the ‘‘volume” from which he quotes; but Miss 
Bogart has not yet collected her writings in volume 
form. Her fugitive pieces have usually been signed 
“‘Estelle.”’ They are noticeable for nerve, dignity 
and finish. Perhaps the four stanzas entitled ‘‘He 
came too Late,” and introduced into Dr. Griswold’s 
volume are the most favorable specimen of her 
manner. Had he not quoted them I should have 
copied them here. 

Miss Bogart is a member of one of the oldest 
families in the State. An interesting sketch of her 
progenitors is to be found in Thompson’s ‘‘ History 
of Long Island.”’ She is about the medium height, 
straight and slender; black hair and eyes; counte- 
nance full of vivacity and intelligence. She con- 
ve.ses with fluency and spirit, enunciates distinctly, 
and exhibits interest in whatever is addressed to 
her—a rare quality in good talkers; has a keen 
appreciation of genius and of natural scenery; is 
cheerful and fond of society. 


CATHERINE M. SEDGWICK 161 


CATHERINE M. SEDGWICK 


ee ee 





| ISS SEDGWICK is not only one of our 
most celebrated and most meritorious 


writers, but attained reputation at a period 
when American reputation in letters was regarded 
as a phenomenon; and thus, like Irving, Cooper, 
Paulding, Bryant, Halleck, and one or two others, 
she is indebted, certainly, for some portion of the 
esteem in which she was and is held, to that patri- 
otic pride and gratitude to which I have already 
alluded, and for which we must make reasonable al- 
lowance in estimating the absolute merit of our 
literary pioneers. 

Her earlist published work of any length was 
“A New England Tale,” designed in the first place 
as a religious tract, but expanding itself into a vol- 
ume of considerable size. Its success—partially 


owing, perhaps, to the influence of the parties for 


whom or at whose instigation it was written—en- 
couraged the author to attempt a novel of somewhat 


greater elaborateness as well as length, and ‘‘Red- 


wood”’ was soon announced, establishing her at 
once as the first female prose writer of her country. 
It was reprinted in England, and translated, I be- 
lieve, into French and Italian. ‘‘Hope Leslie” next 
appeared—also a novel—and was more favorably re- 
ceived even than its predecessors. Afterwards came 


_“Clarence,’”’ not quite so successful, and then **The 


99 


Linwoods,’”’ which took rank in the public esteem 


_with “‘Hope Leslie.” These are all of her longer 
_ prose fictions, but she has written numerous shorter 


Vou. V—i1 


162 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


ones of great merit—such as ‘‘The Rich Poor Man 
and the Poor Rich Man,” “‘Live and let Live,’’ (both 
in volume form,) with various articles for the maga- 
zines and annuals, to which she is still an industrious 
contributor. About ten years since she published 
a compilation of several of her fugitive prose pieces, 
under the title ‘‘Tales and Sketches,” and a short 
time ago a series of ‘‘Letters from Abroad’’—not 
the least popular or least meritorious of her 
compositions. 

Miss Sedgwick has now and then been nicknamed 
‘“‘the Miss Edgeworth of America’’; but she has done 
nothing to bring down upon her the vengeance of so 
equivocal a title. That she has thoroughly studied 
and profoundly admired Miss Edgeworth may, in- 
deed, be gleaned from her works—but what woman 
has not? Of imitation there is not the slightest per- 
ceptible taint. In both authors we observe the same 
tone of thoughtful morality, but here all resemblance 
ceases. In the Englishwoman there is far more of 
a certain Scotch prudence, in the American more of 
warmth, tenderness, sympathy for the weakness of 
her sex. Miss Edgeworth is the more acute, the 
more inventive, and the more rigid. Miss Sedgwick 
is the more womanly. 

All her stories are full of interest. The ‘‘New 
England Tale”’ and ‘‘ Hope Leslie” are especially so, 
but upon the whole I am best pleased with ‘‘The 
Linwoods.”’ Its prevaling features are ease, purity 
of style, pathos, and verisimilitude. To plot it has 
little pretension. The scene is in America, and, as © 
the sub-title indicates, ‘‘Sixty years since.” This, 
by-the-by, is taken from ‘‘Waverley.”’ The adven- 
tures of the family of a Mr. Linwood, a resident of 
New York, form the principal theme. The char- 
acter of this gentleman is happily drawn, although 


CATHERINE M. SEDGWICK 163 


there is an antagonism between the initial and con- 
cluding touches—the end has forgotten the be- 
ginning, like the goverment of Trinculo. Mr. L. has 
two children, Herbert and Isabella. Being himself a 
Tory, the boyish impulses of his son in favor of the 
revolutionists are watched with anxiety and vexa- 
tion; and on the breaking out of the war, Herbert, 
positively refusing to drink the king’s health, is ex- 
pelled from home by his father—an event on which 
hinges the main interest of the narrative. Isabella 
is the heroine proper, full of generous impulses, 
beautiful, intellectual, spirituelle—indeed, a most 
fascinating creature. But the family of a Widow 
Lee throws quite a charm over all the book—a ma- 
tronly, pious and devoted mother, yielding up her 
son to the cause of her country—the son gallant, 
chivalrous, yet thoughtful; a daughter, gentle, loving, 
melancholy, and susceptible of light impressions. 
This daughter, Bessie Lee, is one of the most effec- 
tive personations to be found in our fictitious litera- 
ture, and may lay claims to the distinction of origi- 
nality—no slight distinction where character is con- 
cerned. Itis the old story, to be sure, of a meek and 
trusting heart broken by treachery and abandon- 
ment, but in the narration of Miss Sedgwick it breaks 
upon us with all the freshness of novel emotion. 
Deserted by her lover, an accomplished and aristo- 
cratical coxcomb, the spirits of the gentle girl sink 
gradually from trust to simple hope, from hope to 
anxiety, from anxiety to doubt, from doubt to melan- 
choly, and from melancholy to madness. The 
gradation is depicted in a masterly manner. She 
escapes from her home in New England and endeav- 
ors to make her way alone to New York, with the 
object of restoring to him who had abandoned her, 
some tokens he had given her of his love—an act 


164 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


which her disordered fancy assures her will effect in 
her own person a disenthralment from passion. 
Her piety, her madness, and her beauty, stand her 
in stead of the lion of Una, and she reaches the city 
in safety. In that portion of the narrative which 
embodies this journey are some passages which no 
mind unimbued with the purest spirit of poetry 
could have conceived, and they have often made 
me wonder why Miss Sedgwick has never written 
a poem. 

I have already alluded to her usual excellence of 
style; but she has a very peculiar fault—that of 
discrepancy between the words and character of 
the speaker—the fault, indeed, more properly be- 
longs to the depicting of character itself. 

For example, at page 38, vol. 1, of ‘The Lin- 
woods’”’ :— | 

“No more of my contempt for the Yankees, Hal, an’ 
thou lovest me,’’ replied Jasper. “ You remember A‘sop’s 
advice to Croesus at the Persian court?”’ 

“No, i am sure I do not. You have the most provoking 
way of resting the lever by which you bring out your own ~ 
knowledge, on your friend’s ignorance.”’ 


Now all this is pointed, (although the last sentence 
would have been improved by letting the words ‘‘on © 
your friend’s ignorance’ come immediately after 
‘‘resting,’’) but it is by no means the language of 
schoolboys—and such are the speakers. 

Again, at page 226, vol. 1, of the same novel :— 


“Now, out on you, you lazy, slavish loons!” cried Rose. 
“Cannot you see these men are raised up to fight for 
freedom for more than themselves? If the chain be broken 
at one end, the links will fall apart sooner or later. When 
you see the sun on the mountain top, you may be sure it will 
shine into the deepest valleys before long.” 


Who would suppose this graceful eloquence to 


| 


CATHERINE M. SEDGWICK 165 


proceed from the mouth of a negro woman? Yet 
such is Rose. 
Again, at page 24, vol. 1, same novel :— 


“True, I never saw her; but I tell you, young lad, that 
there is such a thing as seeing the shadow of things far 


- distant and past, and never seeing the realities, though 


they it be that cast the shadows.” 


Here the speaker is an old woman who, a few 
sentences before, has been boasting of her proficiency 
in ‘‘tellin’ fortins.” 

I might object, too, very decidedly to the vulgar- 
ity of such a phrase as “‘I put in my oar,’’ (meaning, 
“‘T joined in the conversation,”’) when proceeding 
from the mouth of so well-bred a personage as Miss 
Isabella Linwood. ‘There are, certainly, most re- 
markable inadvertences. 

As the author of many books—of several abso- 
lutely bound volumes in the ordinary ‘‘novel” form of 
auld lang syne, Miss Sedgwick has a certain adventi- 
tious hold upon the attention of the public, a species 
of tenure that has nothing to do with literature 
proper—a very decided advantage, in short, over her 
more modern rivals whom fashion and the growing 
influence of the want of an international copyright 
law have condemned to the external insignificance 
of the yellow-backed pamphleteering. 

We must permit, however, neither this advantage 
nor the more obvious one of her having been one of our 
pioneers, to bias the critical judgment as it makes 
estimate of her abilitiesin comparison with those of her 
present cotemporaries. She has neither the vigor of 
Mrs. Stephens nor the vivacious grace of Miss Chub- 
buck, nor the pure style of Mrs. Embury, nor the classic 
imagination of Mrs. Child, nor the naturalness of Mrs. 
Annan, nor the thoughtful and suggestive originality 


166 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


of Miss Fuller; but in many of the qualities mentioned 
she excels, andin noone of themisshe particularly defi- 
cient. She is an author of marked talent, but by no 
means of such decided genius as would entitle her to 
that precedence among our female writers which, 
under the circumstances to which I have alluded, 
seems to be yielded her by the voice of the public. 

Strictly speaking, Miss Sedgwick is not one of the 
literatt of New York city, but she passes here about — 
half or rather more than half her time. Her home 
is Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Her family is one of 
the firstin America. Her father, Theodore Sedgwick 
the elder, was an eminent jurist and descended 
from one of Cromwell’s major-generals. Many of 
her relatives have distinguished themselves in various 
ways. 

She is about the medium height, perhaps a little 
below it. Her forehead is an unusually fine one; 
nose of a slightly Roman curve; eyes dark and pier- 
cing; mouth well formed and remarkably pleasant in 
its expression. ‘The portrait in ‘‘Graham’s Maga- 
zine’ is by no means a likeness, and, although the 
hair is represented as curled, (Miss Sedgwick at 
present wears a cap—at least most usually,) gives 
her the air of being much older than she is. | 

Her manners are those of a high-bred woman, 
but her ordinary manner vacillates, in a singular 
way, between cordiality and a reserve amounting 
to hauteur. 


LEWIS GAYLORD CLARK 164 


LEWIS GAYLORD CLARK 


R. CLARK is known principally as the 
M twin brother of the late Willis Gaylord 
Clark, the poet, of Philadelphia, with 
whom he has often been confounded from similarity 
both of person and of name. He is known, also, 
within a more limited circle, as one of the editors of 
‘‘The Knickerbocker Magazine,”’ and it is in this lat- 
ter capacity that I must be considered as placing 
him among literary people. He writes little him- 
self, the editorial scraps which usually appear in fine 
type at the end of ‘‘The Knickerbocker’”’ being the 
joint composition of a great variety of gentlemen 
(most of them possessing shrewdness and talent,) 
connected with diverse journals about the city of 
New York. It is only in some such manner, as 
might be supposed, that so amusing and so heteroge- 
neous a medley of chit-chat could be put together. 
Were a little more pains taken in elevating the tone 
of this ‘‘Editors’ Table,’ (which its best friends are 
forced to admit is at present a little Boweryish,) I 
should have no hesitation in commending it in 
general as a very creditable and very entertaining 
specimen of what may be termed easy writing and 
hard reading. | 
It is not, of course, to be understood from 
anything I have here said, that Mr. Clark does not 
occasionally contribute editorial matter to the maga- 
zine. His compositions, however, are far from nu- 
merous, and are always to be distinguished by their 
style, which is more ‘‘easily to be imagined than de- 


168 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


scribed.” It hasits merit, beyond doubt, but I shall 
not undertake to say that either ‘‘vigor,’’ ‘‘force’’ or 
‘‘impressiveness”’ is the precise term by which that 
merit should be designated. Mr. Clark once did me 
the honor to review my poems, and. I forgive him. 

‘‘The Knickerbocker’”’ has been long established, 
and seems to have in it some important elements of 
success. Its title, for a merely local one, is unques- 
tionably good. Its contributors have usually been 
men of eminence. Washington Irving was at one 
period regularly engaged. Paulding, Bryant, Neal, 
and several others of nearly equal note have also at 
various times furnished articles, although none of 
these gentlemen, I believe, continue their communica- 
tions. In general, the contributed matter has been 
praiseworthy; the printing, paper, and so forth, have 
been excellent, and there certainly has been no lack 
of exertion in the way of what is termed ‘‘putting 
the work before the eye of the public,” still some in- 
comprehensible zucubus has seemed always to sit 
heavily upon it, and it has never succeeded in attain- 
ing position among intelligent or educated readers. 
On account of the manner in which it is necessarily 
edited, the work is deficient in that absolutely in- 
dispensable element, z¢ndividuality. As the editor | 
has no precise character, the magazine, as a matter 
of course, can have none. When I say ‘“‘no precise 
character,” I mean that Mr. C., as a literary man, 
has about him no determinateness, no distinctiveness, 
no saliency of point;—an apple, in fact, or a pump- 
kin, has more angles. He is as smooth as oil or a 
sermon from Doctor Hawks; he is noticeable for 
nothing in the world except for the markedness by 
which he is noticeable for nothing. 

What is the precise circulation of ‘‘The Knicker- 
bocker”’ at present I am unable to say; it has been 





LEWIS GAYLORD CLARK 169 


variously stated at from eight to eighteen hundred 
subscribers. ‘The former estimate is no doubt too 
low, and the latter, I presume, is far too high. There 
are, perhaps, some fifteen hundred copies printed. 

At the period of his brother’s decease, Mr. Lewis 
G. Clark bore to him a striking resemblance, but 
within the last year or two there has been much 
alteration in the person of the editor of the ‘‘ Knicker- 
bocker.’’ He is now, perhaps, forty-two or three, 
but still good-looking. His forehead is, phrenologi- 
cally, bad—round and what is termed ‘‘bullety.” 
The mouth, however, is much better, although the 
smile is too constant and lacks expression; the teeth 
are white and regular. His hair and whiskers are 
dark, the latter meeting voluminously beneath the 
chin. In height Mr. C. is about five feet ten or 
eleven, and in the street might be regarded as quite 
a ‘‘personable man”’; in society I have never had 
the pleasure of meeting him. Heis married, I believe. 


t7O EDGAR ALLAN POE 


ANNE C. LYNCH 


ISS ANNE CHARLOTTE LYNCH has 
M written little;—her compositions are even 
too few to be collected in volume form. 

Her prose had been, for the most part, anonymous— 
critical papers in ‘‘The New York Mirror” and else- 
where, with unacknowledged contributions to the 
annuals, especially ‘*The Gift,’’ and ‘‘*The Diadem,”’ 
both of Philadelphia. Her “‘Diary of a Recluse,” 
published in the former work, is, perhaps, the best 
specimen of her prose manner and ability. I re- 
member, also, a fair critique on Fanny Kemble’s 
poems ;—this appeared in ‘‘The Democratic Review.” 
In poetry, however, she has done better, and 
given evidence of at least unusual talent. Some of 
her compositions in this way are of merit, and one 
or two of excellence. In the former class I place her 
‘‘Bones in the Desert,’’ published in ‘‘The Opal” 
for 1846, her ‘‘ Farewell to Ole Bull,” first printed in 
‘“The Tribune,”’ and one or two of her sonnets—not — 
forgetting some graceful and touching lines on the 
death of Mrs. Willis. In the latter class I place two 
noble poems, ‘‘The Ideal” and ‘‘The Ideal Found.” 
These should be considered as one, for each is by itself 
imperfect. In modulation and vigor of rhythm, 
in dignity and elevation of sentiment, in metaphori- 
cal appositeness and accuracy, and in energy of ex- 
pression, I really donot know where to point out any- 
thing American much superior to them. Their. 
ideality is not so manifest as their passions, but I 
think it an unusual indication of taste in Miss 


ANNE C. LYNCH 141i 


Lynch, or (more strictly) of an intuitive sense of 
poetry’s true nature, that this passion is just suffi- 
ciently subdued to lie within the compass of the po- 
etic art, within the limits of the beautiful. A step 
farther and it might have passed them. Mere 
passion, however exciting, prosaically excites; it is 
in its very essence homely, and delights in homeli- 
ness: but the trzwmph over passion, as so finely de- 
picted in the two poems mentioned, is one of the 
purest and most idealizing manifestations of moral 
beauty. 

In character Miss Lynch is enthusiastic, chival- 
ric, self-sacrificing, “‘equal to any fate,’”’ capable of 
even martyrdom in whatever should seem to her a 
holy cause—a most exemplary daughter. She has 
her hobbies, however, (of which a very indefinite 
idea of “‘duty” is one,) and is, of course, readily im- 
posed upon by any artful person who perceives and 
takes advantage of this most amiable failing. 

In person she is rather above the usual height, 
somewhat slender, with dark hair and eyes—the 
whole countenance at times full of intelligent ex- 
pression. Her demeanor is dignified, graceful, and 
noticeable for respose. She goes much into liter- 


ary society. 


172 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN 


R, CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN has 
M been long known to the public as an 
author. He commenced his literary ca- 
reer (as is usually the case in America) by writ- 
ing for the newspapers—for ‘“‘The New York 
American” especially, in the editorial conduct of 
which he became in some manner associated, at a 
very early age, with Mr. Charles King. His first 
book, I believe, was a collection (entitled ‘‘A Winter | 
in the West’’) of letters published in ‘‘The American” 
during a tour made by their author through the “‘far — 
West.”’ This work appeared in 1834, went through 
several editions, was reprinted in London, was very 
popular, and deserved its popularity. It conveys 
the natural enthusiasm of a true idealist, in the 
proper phrenological sense, of one sensitively alive to 
beauty in every development. Its scenic descrip- 
tions are vivid, because fresh, genuine, unforced. 
There is nothing of the cant of the tourist for the 
sake not of nature but of tourism. The author 
writes what he feels, and, clearly, because he feels it. 
The style, as well as that of all Mr. Hoffman’s books, 
is easy, free from  superfluities, and, although 
abundant in broad phrases, still sigularly refined, 
gentlemanly. This ability to speak boldly without 
blackguardism, to use the tools of the rabble when 
necessary without soiling or roughening the hands 
with their employment, is a rare and unerring test 
of the natural in contradistinction from the arti- 
ficial aristoczat. 


CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN 173 


Mr. H.’s next work was ‘‘ Wild Scenes in the Forest 
and Prairie,’ very similar to the preceding, but 
more diversified with anecdote and interspersed 
with poetry. ‘‘Greyslaer”’ followed, a romance based 
on the well known murder of Sharp, the Solicitor- 
General of Kentucky, by Beauchampe. W. Gilmore 
Simms, (who has far more power, more passion, 
more movement, more skill than Mr. Hoffman) 
has treated the same subject more effectively in his 
novel ‘‘Beauchampe,”’ but the fact is that both 
gentlemen have positively failed, as might have been 
expected. That both books are interesting is no 
merit either of Mr. H. or of Mr. S. The real events 
were more impressive than are the fictitious ones. 
The facts of this remarkable tragedy, as arranged by 
actual circumstance, would put to shame the skill 
of the most consummate artist. Nothing was left 
to the novelist but the amplification of character, 
and at this point neither the author of ‘‘Greyslaer” 
nor of ‘‘Beauchampe”’ is especially au fait. The 
incidents might be better woven into a tragedy. 
In the way of poetry, Mr. Hoffman has also writ- 

ten a good deal. ‘‘The Vigil of Faith and other 
Poems”’ is the title of a volume published several 
years ago. The subject of the leading poem is 
happy—whether originally conceived by Mr. H. or 
based on an actual superstition, Icannotsay. Two 
Indian chiefs are rivalsin love. The accepted lover 
is about to be made happy, when his betrothed is 
murdered by the discarded suitor. The revenge 
taken is the careful preservation of the life of the 
assassin, under the idea that the meeting the 
maiden in ar ther world is the point most desired 
by both the survivors. The incidents interwoven 
are picturesque, and there are many quotable 
passages; the descriptive portions are particularly 


174 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


good; but the author has erred, first, in narrating 
the story in the first person, and secondly, in put- 
ting into the mouth of the narrator language and 
sentiments above the nature of an Indian. I say 
that the narration should not have been in the first 
person, because, although an Indian may and does 
fully experience a thousand delicate shades of senti 
ment, (the whole idea of the story is essentially senti 
mental,) still he has, clearly, no capacity for theit 
various expression. Mr. Hoffman’s hero is made to 
discourse very much after the manner of Rousseau. 
Nevertheless, ‘‘The Vigil of Faith” is, upon the 
whole, one of our most meritorious poems. The 
shorter pieces in the collection have been more popu- 
lar; one or two of the songs particularly so—‘‘Spark- 
ling and Bright,’”’ for example, which is admirably 
adapted to song purposes, and is full of lyric feelings. | 
It cannot be denied, however, that, in general, the 
whole tone, air and spirit of Mr. Hoffman’s fugitive 
compositions are echoes of Moore. At times the 
very words and figures of the ‘‘British Anacreon”’ 
are unconsciously adopted. Neither can there be 
any doubt that this obvious similarity, if not posi- 
tive imitation, is the source of the commendation 
bestowed upon our poet by ‘‘The Dublin Univer- 
sity Magazine,” which declares him ‘‘the best song 
writer in America,’’ and does him also the honor to 
intimate its opinion that ‘‘he is a better fellow than 
the whole Yankee crew” of us taken together— 
after which there is very little to be said. 

Whatever may be the merits of Mr. Hoffman as a 
poet, it may be easily seen that these merits have 
been put in the worst possible light Sy the indis- 
criminate and lavish approbation bestowed on them 
by Dr. Griswold in his ‘‘ Poets and Poetry of America.” 
The editor can find vo blemish in Mr. H., agrees with 


CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN 175 


everything and copies everything said in his praise— 
worse than all, gives him more space in the book 
than any two, or perhaps three, of our poets combined. 
All this is as much an insult to Mr. Hoffman as 
to the public, and has done the former irreparable 
-injury—how or why, it is of course unnecessary to 
say. ‘‘Heaven save us from our friends!” 

Mr. Hoffman was the original editor of ‘‘The 
Knickerbocker Magazine,” and gave it while under 
his control a tone and character, the weight of which 
may be best estimated by the consideration that the 
work thence received, an impetus which has sufficed 
to bear it on alive, although tottering, month after 
month, through even that dense region of unmiti- 
gated and unmitigable fog—that dreary realm of 
outer darkness, of utter and inconceivable dunder- 
headism, over which has so long ruled King Log the 
Second, in the august person of one Lewis Gay- 
lord Clark. Mr. Hoffman subsequently owned and 
edited ‘‘The American Monthly Magazine,’ one of 
the best journals we have ever had. He also for one 
year conducted ‘‘The New York Mirror,” and has 
always been a very constant contributor to the peri- 
odicals of the day. 

He is the brother of Ogden Hoffman. Their 
father, whose family came to New York from Holland 
before the time of Peter Stuyvesant, was often 
brought into connexion or rivalry with such men as 
Pinckney, Hamilton and Burr. 

The character of no man is more universally es- 
teemed and admired than that of the subject of 
this memoir. He has a host of friends, and it is 
quite impossible that he should have an enemy in 
the world. He is chivalric to a fault, enthusiastic, 
frank without discourtesy, an ardent admirer of the 
beautiful, a gentleman of the best school—a gentle- 


176 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


man by birth, by education and by instinct. His 
manners are graceful and winning in the extreme— 
quiet, affable and dignified, yet cordial and dégages. 
He converses much, earnestly, accurately and well. 
In person he is remarkably handsome. He is about 
five feet ten in height, somewhat stoutly made. His 
countenance is a noble one—a full index of the char- 
acter. The features are somewhat massive but reg- 
ular. The eyes are blue, or light gray, and full of 
fire; the mouth finely formed, although the lips have 
a slight expression of voluptuousness; the forehead, 
to my surprise although high, gives no indication, in 
the region of the temples, of that ideality (or love of 
the beautiful) which is the distinguishing trait of his 
moral nature. The hair curls, and is of adark brown, 
interspersed with gray. He wears full whiskers. Is 
about forty years of age. Unmarried. 


MARY BE. HEWITT 17 


MARY E. HEWITT 


any prose; but her poems have been many, and 

occasionally excellent. A collection of them 
was published, in an exquisitely tasteful form, by 
Ticknor & Co., of Boston. The leading piece, en- 
titled ‘‘Songs of our Land,” although the longest, 
was by no means the most meritorious. In general, 
these compositions evince poetic fervor, classicism, 
and keen appreciation both of moral and physical 
beauty. No one of them, perhaps, can be judi- 
ciously commended asa whole; but no one of them is 
without merit, and there are several which would 
do credit to any poet in the land. Still, even these 
latter are particularly rather than generally commen- 
dable. They lack unity, totality—ultimate effect, 
but abound in forcible passages, For example: 


I AM not aware that Mrs. Hewitt has written 


Shall I portray thee in thy glorious seeming, 
Thou that the pharos of my darkness art?... 


Like the blue lotos on its own clear river 
Lie thy soft eyes, beloved, upon my soul.... 


And there the slave, a slave no more, 
Hung reverent up the chain he wore.... 


Here ’mid your wild and dark defile 
O’erawed and wonder-whelmed I stand, 
And ask—“ is this the fearful vale 
That opens on the shadowy land?’’.... 
VoL. V—12 


178 EDGAR ALLAN POB 


Oh friends! we would be treasured still, 
Though Time’s cold hand should cast 
His misty veil, in after years, 
Over the idol Past, 
Yet send to us some offering thought 
O’er Memory’s ocean wide, 
Pure as the Hindoo’s votive lamp 
On Ganga’s sacred tide. 


Mrs. Hewitt has warm partialities for the sea and 
all that concerns it. Many of her best poems turn 
upon sea adventures or have reference to a mari- 
time life. Some portions of her “‘God bless the 
Mariner’’ are naive and picturesque: e. g.— 


God bless the happy mariner! 
A homely garb wears he, 

And he goeth with a rolling gait, 
Like a shtp before the sea. 

He hath piped the loud “ay, ay, Sir!” 
O’er the voices of the main 

Till his deep tones have the hoarseness 
Of the rising hurricane. 


But oh, a spirit looketh 
From out his clear blue eye, 

With a truthful childlike earnestness, 
Like an angel from the sky. 


A venturous life the sailor leads 
Between the sky and sea, 

But, when the hour of dread is past, 
A merrier who than he? 


The tone of some quatrains entitled ‘‘ Alone,” dif- 
fers materially from that usual with Mrs. Hewitt. 
The idea is happy and well managed. 

Mrs. Hewitt’s sonnets are upon the whole, her 
most praiseworthy compositions. One entitled 
‘‘Hercules and Omphale”’ is noticeable for the vigor 
of its rhythm. 


MARY E. HEWITT 179 


Reclined, enervate, on the couch of ease, 

No more he pants for deeds of high emprize; 
For Pleasure holds in soft voluptuous ties 

Enthralled, great Jove-descended Hercules. 

The hand that bound the Erymanthean boar, 
Hesperia’s dragon slew with bold intent, 

That from his quivering side in triumph rent 

The skin the Cleonean lion wore, 

Holds forth the goblet—while the Lydian queen, 
Robed like a nymph, her brow enwreathed with vine, 
Lifts high the amphora brimmed with rosy wine, 

And pours the draught the crowned cup within. 

And thus the soul, abased to sensual sway, 

Its worth forsakes—its might forgoes for aye. 


The unusual force of the line italicized, will be 
observed. This force arises first, from the direct- 
ness, or colloquialism without vulgarity, of its ex- 
pression:—(the relative pronoun ‘‘which’’ is very 
happily omitted between ‘‘skin” and ‘‘the’’)—and, 
secondly, to the musical repetition of the vowel in 
“‘Cleongan”’, together with the alliterative termina- 
tions in ‘‘Cleonzan”’ and ‘‘lion.’’ The effect, also, 
is much aided by the sonorous conclusion ‘‘wore.’’ 

Another and better instance of fine versification 
occurs in ‘‘Forgotten Heroes.” 


And the peasant mother at her door, 
To the babe that climbed her knee, 

Sang aloud the land’s heroic songs— 
Sang of Thermopyle— 

Sang of Mycale—of Marathon— 
Of proud Platza’s day— 

Till the wakened hills from peak to peak 
Echoed the glorious lay. 

Oh, godlike name!—oh, godlike deed! 
Song-borne afar on every breeze, 

Ye are sounds to thrill like a battle shout, 
Leonidas! Miltiades! 


The general intention here is a line of four iam- 
buses alternating with a line of three; but, less 


180 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


through rhythmical skill than a musical ear, the 
poetess has been led into some exceedingly happy 
variations of the theme. For example;—in place 
of the ordinary iambus as the first foot of the first, 
of the second, and of the third line, a bastard iambus 
has been employed. ‘These lines are thus scanned: 


aa tits peas | as moth | sf at | Ha door | 
a O the babe | that clined | ie renee | 
Sang aloud | pas ree heme |i ip songs | 


The four fie, 
Sang of | Thermo | pyle 


is well varied by a trochee, instead of an iambus, in 
the first foot; and the variation expresses forcibly 
the enthusiasm excited by the topic of the supposed — 
songs, ‘‘Thermopyle.” The fifth line is scanned 
as the first three. The sixth is the general intention, 
and consists simply of iambuses. ‘The seventh is 
like the first three and the fifth. The eighth, is like 
the fourth; and here again the opening trochee is 
admirably adapted to the movement of the topic. 
The ninth is the general intention, and is formed of 
four iambuses. The tenth is an alternating line and 
yet has four iambuses, instead of the usual three; as 
has also the final line—an alternating one, too. A 
fuller volume is in this manner given to the close of 
subject; and this volume is fully in keeping with the 
rising enthusiasm. The last line but one has two 
bastard iambuses, thus: 


Ye are sounds | to thrill | like a bat | tle shout | . 
4 4 2 Aide 2 


Upon the whole, it may be said that the most skil- 
ful versifier could not have written lines better 


MARY E. HEWITT 181 


suited to the purposes of the poet. The errors of 
*““Alone,’’ however, and of Mrs. Hewitt’s poems 
generally, show that we must regard the beauties 
pointed out above, merely in the light to which I 
have already alluded—that is to say, as occasional 
happiness to which the poetess is led by a musical ear. 

I should be doing this lady injustice were I not to 
mention that, at times, she rises into a higher and 
purer region of poetry than might be supposed, or 
inferred, from any of the passages which I have 
hitherto quoted. The conclusion of her ‘‘Ocean 
Tide to the Rivulet”” puts me in mind of the rich 
spirit of Horne’s noble epic, ‘‘Orion.”’ 


Sadly the flowers their faded petals close 

Where on thy banks they languidly repose, 
Waiting in vain to hear thee onward press; 

And pale Narcissus by thy margin side 

Hath lingered for thy coming, drooped and died, 
Pining for thee amid the loneliness. 


Hasten, beloved!—here! ’neath the o’erhanging rockt 
Hark! from the deep, my anxious hope to mock, 
They call me back unto my parent main. 
Brighter than Thetis thou—and ah, more fleet! 
I hear the rushing of thy fair white feet! 
Joy! joy!—my breast receives its own again! 


The personifications here are well managed. The 
‘‘Here!—’neath the o’erhanging rock!” has the 
high merit of being truthfully, by which I mean 
naturally, expressed, and imparts exceeding vigor 
to the whole stanza. The idea of the ebb-tide, con- 
veyed in the second line italicized, is one of the 
happiest imaginable; and too much praise can scarcely 
be bestowed on the ‘‘rushing” of the ‘‘fair white 
feet.” The passage altogether is full of fancy, 
earnestness, and the truest poetic strength. Mrs. 
Hewitt has given many such indications of a fire 


182 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


which, with more earnest endeavor, might be readily 
fanned into flame. 

In character, she is sincere, fervent, benevolent— 
sensitive to praise and to blame; in temperament 
melancholy; in manner subdued; converses earnestly 
yet quietly. In person she is tall and slender, with 
black hair and full gray eyes; complexion dark; gen- 
eral expression of the countenance singularly inter- 
esting and agreeable. 


alten 
Ay 








OTHE LIBRARY 


QF THE em 
WMIWERSITY AF ALINGIS 





THOMAS HOOD 183 


THOMAS HOOD 


American editor of his works, ‘‘Hood has 
been called a great author, a phrase used not 
inconsiderately or in vain,” but, if we adopt the con- 
ventional idea of ‘‘a great author,’’ there has lived, 
perhaps, no writer of the last half century who, with 
equal notoriety, was less entitled than Hood to the 
term. In fact he was a literary merchant whose 
principal stock-in-trade was littleness—for during 
the larger portion of his life he seemed to breathe 
only for the purpose of perpetrating puns—things 
of such despicable platitude that the man who is 
capable of habitually committing them is very 
seldom capable of anything else. In especial, what- 
ever merit may accidentally be discovered in a pun, 
arises altogether from wnexpectedness. This is its 
element, and is twofold. First, we demand that the 
combination of the pun be unexpected, and sec- 
ondly, we demand the most entire unexpectedness 
in the pun perse. A rare pun, rarely appearing is, to 
a certain extent, a pleasurable effect—but to no mind, 
however debased in taste, is a continuous effort at 
punning otherwise than wunendurable. The man 
who maintains that he derives gratification from 
any such chapters of punnage as Hood was in the 
daily habit of putting on paper has no claim to be 
believed upon his oath. 
The continuous and premeditated puns of Hood, 
however, are to be regarded as the weak points of 
the man. Independently of their ill effect, in a 


*Pitsecan es since his death,” says the 


184 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


literary view, as mere puns, they leave upon us a 
painful impression; for too evidently they are the 
hypochondriac’s struggles at mirth—they are the 
grinnings of the death’s-head. No one can read his 
‘‘Literary Reminiscences” without being convinced 
of his habitual despondency—and the species of 
pseudo-wit in question is precisely of that character 
which would be adopted by an author of Hood’s tem- 
perament and cast of intellect when compelled to 
write at an emergency. That his heart had no 
interest in these nzazseries is clear. We allude, of 
course, to his mere puns for the puns’ sake—a class 
of writings by which he attained his most extensive 
renown. That he did more in this way than any 
other would follow as a corollary from what we have 
already said—for generally he was unhappy, and 
almost continually he was obliged to write invita 
Minerva. But his true element was a very rare and 
ethereal class of humour, in which the mere pun was 
left altogether out of sight, or took the character of the 
richest grctesquerte, iinpressing the imaginative reader 
with very remarkable force, as if by a new phase of 
theideal. Itisin this species of brilliant grotesqueries, 
uttered with a rushing abandon which wonderfully 
aided its effect, that Hood’s marked originality 
of manner consisted; and it is this which fairly en- 
titles him at times to the epithet ‘‘great’’ ;—-we say, 
fairly so entitles him; for that undeniably may be 
considered great (of whatever seeming littleness in 
itself) which has the capability of producing intense 
emotion in the minds of those who are themselves 
undeniably great. 

When we said, however, that Hood wrought pro- 
found impressions upon imaginative men, we spoke 
only of what is imagination in the popular accep- 
tance of the term. His true province—that is to say 


THOMAS HOOD 185 


the field in which he is distinctive—is a kind of 
borderland between the Fancy and the Fantasy— 
but in this region he reigns supreme. But when we 
speak of his province as a borderland between Fan- 
tasy and Fancy, of course we do not mean rigorously 
to confine him to this province. He has made very 
successful and frequent incursions into the domin- 
ions of humour (in general he has been too benevo- 
lent to be witty), and there have been one or two 
occasions in which he has stepped boldly into the 
realm of Imagination herself. We mean to say, 
however, that he is rarely imaginative for more than 
aparagraph atatime. Inaword, the genius of Hood 
is the result of vivid fancy impelled or controlled, 
certainly tinctured at all points, by hypochon- 
driasis. In his wild ‘‘Ode to Melancholy”’ we per- 
ceive this result in the very clearest of manifesta- 
tions. Few things have ever more deeply affected 
us than the passages which follow :— 


O clasp me, sweet, whilst thou art mine, 
And do not take my tears amiss; 

For tears must flow to wash away 

A thought that shows so stern as this: 
Forgive, if somewhile I forget, 

In woe to come, the present bliss, 

As frighted Proserpine let fall 

Her flowers at the sight of Dis, 

Ev’n so the dark and bright will kiss. 
The sunniest things throw sternest shade, 
And there is ev’n a happiness 

That makes the heart afraid! 


Ail things are touch’d with melancholy 
Born of the secret soul’s mistrust, 

To feel her fair ethereal wings 

Weigh down with vile degraded dust 
Even the bright extremes of joy 

Bring on conclusions of disgust, 


186 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Like the sweet blossoms of the May 
Whose fragrance ends in must. 

O give her, then, her tribute just, 

Her sighs and tears, and musings holy 
There is no music in the life 

That sounds with idiot laughter solely; 
There’s not a string attuned to mirth, 
But has its chords of melancholy,”’ 


‘‘The Dream of Eugene Aram,” is too well known 
in America to need comment from us. It has more 
of true imagination than almost any other composi- 
tion of its author—but even when engaged on so 
serious a subject, he found great difficulty in keeping 
aloof from the grotesque—the result (we say) of 
warm fancy impelled by hypochondriasis. The 
opening stanza affords an example: 


“ Twas in the prime of summer time, 
An evening calm and cool, 
When four-and-twenty happy boys 
Came bounding out of school; 
There were some that ran, and some that leapt 
Like troutlets in a pool.” 


The twenty-fourth stanza approaches more nearly 
the imaginative spirit than any passage in the poem, 
but the taint of the fantastical is over it still; 


And peace went with them one and all 
And each calm pillow spread; 

But guilt was my grim chamberlain, 
That lighted me to bed; 

And drew my midnight curtains round, 
With fingers bloody red!’’ 


‘*Fair Ines,” is so beautiful that we shall purloin 
it in full, although we have no doubt that it is famil- 
iar to our readers.* ‘‘Miss Kilmansegg and her 
Precious Leg,’’ is, perhaps, more thoroughly charac- 

*And for this reason it is now omitted.—Ed, 


THOMAS HOOD 17 


teristic of Hood’s genius than any single thing which 
he has written. It is quite a long poem—comprising 
nearly three thousand lines—and its author has 
evidently laboured much with it. Its chief defect 
is in its versification; for this Hood had no ear—of 
its principles he knew nothing at all. Not that his 
verses, individually, are very lame, but that they 
have no capacity for running together. The reader 
is continually getting baulked, not because the lines 
are unreadable, but because the lapse from one 
rhythm to another is so inartistically managed. 

The story concerns a very rich heiress who is ex- 
cessively pampered by her parents, and who at 
length gets thrown from a horse and so injures a leg 
as to render amputation inevitable. To supply the 
place of the true limb, she insists upon a leg of solid 
gold—a leg of the exact proportions of the original. 
She puts up with its inconvenience for the sake of 
the admiration it excites. Its attraction, however, 
excites the cupidity of a chevalier d’industrie, who 
cajoles her into wedlock, dissipates her fortune, and 
finally, purloining her golden leg, dashes out her 
brains with it, elopes, and puts an end to the story. 
It is wonderfully well told, and abounds in the most 
brilliant points—embracing something of each of 
the elementary faculties which we have been dis- 
cussing—but most especially rich in that which 
we have termed Fantasy. 

The most remarkable poems, however, are those. 
which we have still to speak of. They convey, too, 
most distinctly the genius of the author—nor can 
any one thoughtfully read them without a convic- 
tion that hitherto that genius has been greatly mis- 
conceived—without perceiving that even the wit of 
Hood had its birth in a tint of melancholy perhaps 
hereditary—and nearly amounting to monomania, 


188 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


‘‘The Song of the Shirt’’ is such a composition as 
only Hood could have conceived or written. Its 
popularity has been unbounded. Its effect arises 
from that grotesquerie which we have referred to the 
vivid fancy of the author, impelled by hypochon- 
driasis; but ‘The Song of the Shirt” has scarcely a. 
claim to the title of poem. This, however, is a mere 
question of words, and can by no means affect the 
high merit of the composition, to whatever appel- 
lation it may be considered entitled. 

‘The Bridge of Sighs,” on the contrary, is a poem 
of the loftiest order, and, with one exception, the 
finest written by Hood—being very far superior to 
“The Dream of Eugene Aram.” Not its least merit 
is the effective rush and whirl of its singular versi- 
fication—so thoroughly in accordance with the wild 
insanity which is the thesis of the whole. 

‘‘The Haunted House’’ we prefer to any composi- 
tion of its author. It is a masterpiece of its kind— 
and that kind belongs to a very lofty—if not to the 
very loftiest order of poetical literature. Had we » 
seen this piece before penning our first notice of 
Hood* we should have had much hesitation in speak- 
ing of Fancy and Fantasy as his predominant fea- 
tures. At all events we should have given him 
credit for much more of true imagination than we 
did. Not the least merit of the work is its rigorous 
simplicity. There is no narrative, and no doggerel 
philosophy. The whole subject is the description 
of a deserted house which the popular superstition 
considered haunted. The thesis in one of the tru- 
est in all poetry. As a mere thesis it is really diffi- 
cult to conceive anything better. The strength of 
the poet is put forth in the invention of traits in 
keeping with the ideas of crime, abandonment, and 

*This Review of Hood’s Poems appeared in two parts. 


THOMAS HOOD 189 


ghostly visitation. Every legitimate art is brought 
in to aid in conveying the intended effects; and 
(what is quite remarkable in the case of Hood) 
nothing discordant is at any point introduced. He 
has here very little of what we have designated as 
the fantastic—little which is not strictly harmonious. 
The metre and rhythm are not only in themselves 
admirably adapted to the whole design, but, with a 
true artistic feeling, the poet has preserved a thorough 
monotone throughout, and renders its effect more 
impressive by the repetition (gradually increasing 
in frequency towards the finale) of one of the most 
pregnant and effective of the stanzas: 


“O’er all there hung a shadow and a fear, 
And a sense of mystery the spirit daunted, 
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear 
The place is haunted!”’ 


Had Hood only written ‘‘The Haunted House” 
it would have sufficed to render him immortal. 


190 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE 


BOUT twelve years ago, I think, ‘‘The New 
A York Sun,”’ a daily paper, price one penny, 

was established in the city of New York by 
Mr. Moses Y. Beach, who engaged Mr. Richard 
Adams Locke as its editor. In a well-written 
prospectus, the object of the journal professed to 
be that of “‘supplying the public with the news of 
the day at so cheap a rate as to lie within the means 
of all.”’ The consequences of the scheme, in their 
influence on the whole newspaper business of the 
country, and through this business on the interests 
of the country at large, are probably beyond all 
calculation. 

Previous to ‘‘The Sun,’ there had been an un- 
successful attempt at publishing a penny paper in 
New York, and ‘‘The Sun” itself was originally pro- 
jected and for a short time issued by Messrs. Day & 
Wisner; its establishment, however, is altogether 
due to Mr. Beach, who purchased it of its disheart- 
ened originators. The first decided movement of 
the journal, nevertheless, is to be attributed to Mr. 
Locke; and in so saying, I by no means intend any 
depreciation of Mr. Beach, since in the engagement 
of Mr. L. he had but given one of the earliest in- 
stances of that unusual sagacity for which I am in- 
clined to yield him credit. 

At all events, “‘The Sun” was revolving in a 
comparatively narrow orbit when, one fine day, 
there appeared in its editorial columns a prefatory 
article announcing veiv remarkable astronomical 


RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE IQX 


discoveries made at the Cape of Good Hope by Sir 
John Herschell. The information was said to have 
been received by ‘‘The Sun” from an early copy of 
“The Edinburgh Journal of Science,’ in which ap- 
peared a communication from Sir John himself. 
This preparatory announcement took very well, 
(there had been no hoaxes in those days,) and was 
followed by full details of the reputed discoveries, 
which were now found to have been made chiefly 
in respect to the moon, and by means of a tele- 
scope to which the one lately constructed by the 
Earl of Rosse is a plaything. As these discoverics 
were gradually spread before the public, the aston- 
ishment of that public grew out of all bounds; but 
those who questioned the veracity of ‘‘The Sun’’— 
the authenticity of the communication to ‘‘The 
Edinburgh Journal of Science’’—were really very 
few indeed; and this I am forced to look upon as a 
far more wonderful thing than any ‘‘man-bat”’ of 
them all. 

About six months before this occurrence, the 
Harpers had issued an American edition of Sir John 
Herschell’s ‘Treatise on Astronomy,’’ and I have 
been much interested in what is there said respect- 
ing the possibility of future lunar investigations. 
The theme excited my fancy, and I longed to give 
free rein to it in depicting my day-dreams about 
the scenery of the moon—in short, I longed to write 
a story embodying these dreams. The obvious 
difficulty, of course, was that of accounting for the 
narrator’s acquaintance with the satellite; and the 
equally obvious mode of surmounting the difficulty 
was the supposition of an extraordinary telescope. 
I saw at once that the chief interest of such a narra- 
tive must depend upon the reader’s yielding his 
credence in some measure as to details of actual fact. 


192 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


At this stage of my deliberations, I spoke of the 
design to one or two friends—to Mr. John P. Ken- 
nedy, the author of ‘‘Swallow Barn,” among others 
—and the result of my conversations with them 
was that the optical difficulties of constructing such 
a telescope as I conceived were so rigid and so com- 
monly understood, that it would be in vain to at- 
tempt giving due verisimilitude to any fiction hav- 
ing the telescope as abasis. Reluctantly, therefore, 
and only half convinced, (believing the public, in fact, 
more readily gullible than did my friends,) I gave 
up the idea of imparting very close verisimilitude 
to what I should write—that is to say, so close as 
really to deceive. I fell back upon a style half 
plausible, half bantering, and resolved to give what 
interest I could to an actual passage from the earth 
to the moon, describing the lunar scenery as if sur- 
veyed and personally examined by the narrator. 
In this view I wrote a story which I called ‘‘Hans 
Pfaall,”” publishing it about six months afterwards 
in ‘‘The Southern Literary Messenger,” of which I 
was then editor. 

It was three weeks after the issue of ‘‘The Mes- 
senger’’ containing ‘‘Hans Pfaall,”’ that the first 
of the ‘‘Moon-hoax”’ editorials made its appearance 
in ‘‘The Sun,”’ and no sooner had I seen the paper 
than I understood the jest, which not for a moment 
could I doubt had been suggested by my own jeu 
desprit. Some of the New York journals (‘‘The 
Transcript’? among others) saw the matter in the 
same light, and published the ‘‘Moon story” side 
by side with ‘“‘Hans Pfaall,” thinking that the 
author of the one had been detected in the author 
of the other. Although the details are, with 
some exceptions, very dissimilar, still I maintain 
that the general features of the two compositions 


RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE 103 


are nearly identical. Both are hoaxes, (although 
one is in a tone of mere banter, the other of down- 
tight earnest;) both hoaxes are on one subject, 
astronomy; both on the same point of that subject, 
the moon; both professed to have derived exclusive 
information from a foreign country, and both at- 
tempt to give plausibility by minuteness of scien- 
tific detail. Add to all this, that nothing of a simi- 
lar nature had ever been attempted before these two 
hoaxes, the one of which followed immediately 
upon the heels of the other. 

Having stated the case, however, in this form, 
I am bound to do Mr. Locke the justice to say that 
he denies having seen my article prior to the pub- 
lication of his own; I am bound to add, also, that 
I believe him. 

Immediately on the completion of the ‘‘Moon 
story,” (it was three or four days in getting finished,) 
I wrote an examination of its claims to credit. 
showing distinctly its fictitious character, but was 
astonished at finding that I could obtain few listen- 
ers, so really eager were all to be deceived, so magi- 
cal were the charms of a style that served as the 
vehicle of an exceedingly clumsy invention. 

It may afford even now some amusement to see 
pointed out those particulars of the hoax which 
should have sufficed to establish its real character. 
Indeed, however rich the imagination displayed in 
this fiction, it wanted much of the force which 
might have been given it by a more scrupulous at- 
tention to general analogy and to fact. That the 
public were misled, even for an instant, merely 
proves the gross ignorance which (ten or twelve 
years ago) was so prevalent on astronomical topics. 

The moon’s distance from the earth is, in round 
numbers, 240,000 miles. If we wish to ascertain 

Vor. V—13 


104 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


how near, apparently, a lens would bring the satel- 
lite, (or any distant object,) we, of course, have but 
to divide the distance by the magnifying, or, more 
strictly, by the space-penetrating power of the glass. 
Mr. Locke gives his lens a power of 42,000 times. 
By this divide 240,000, (the moon’s real distance,) 
and we have five miles and five-sevenths as the ap- 
parent distance. No animal could be seen so far, 
much less the minute points particularized in the 
story. Mr. L. speaks about Sir John Herschell’s 
perceiving flowers, (the papaver Rheas, etc.,) and 
even detecting the color and the shape of the eyes of 
small birds. Shortly before, too, the author himself 
observes that the lens would not render perceptible 
objects less than eighteen inches in diameter; but 
even this, as I have said, is giving the glass far too 
great a power. 

On page 18, (of the pamphlet edition,) speaking of 
‘fa hairy veil” over the eyes of a species of bison, Mr. 
L. says—‘‘It immediately occurred to the acute 
mind of Doctor Herschell that this was a providential 
contrivance to protect the eyes of the animal from 
the great extremes of light and darkness to which all 
the inhabitants of our side of the moon are periodically 
subjected.”’ But this should not be thought a very 
‘“facute’’observation of the Doctor’s. The inhabi- 
tants of our side of the moon have, evidently, no 
darkness at all; in the absence of the sun they have 
a light from the earth equal to that of thirteen full - 
moons, so that there can be nothing of the extremes 
mentioned. 

The topography throughout, even when profess- 
ing to accord with Blunt’s Lunar Chart, is at vari- 
ance with that and all other lunar charts, and even 
at variance with itself. The points of the compass, 
too, are in sad confusion; the writer seeming to be un- 


RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE 195 


aware that, on a lunar map, these are not in accord- 
ance with terrestial points—the east being to the 
left, and so forth. 

Deceived, perhaps, by the vague titles Mare 
Nubtum, Mare Tranquiltatis, Mare Fecunditatis, 
etc., given by astronomers of former times to the 
dark patches on the moon’s surface, Mr. L. 
has long details respecting oceans and other large 
bodies of water in the moon; whereas there is no 
astronomical point more positively ascertained than 
that no such bodies exist there. In examining the 
boundary between light and darkness in a crescent 
or gibbous moon, where this boundary crosses any 
of the dark places, the line of division is found to be 
jagged; but were these dark places liquid, they 
would evidently be even. 

The description of the wings of the man-bat (on 
page 21) is but a literal copy of Peter Wilkins’ ac- 
count of the wings of his flying islanders. This 
simple fact should at least have induced suspicion. 

On page 23 we read thus—‘‘ What a prodigious 
influence must our thirteen times larger globe have 
exercised upon this satellite when an embryo in the 
womb of time, the passive subject of chemical af- 
finity!’ Now, this is very fine; but it should be ob- 
served that no astronomer could have made such 
remark, especially to any ‘‘Journal of Science,’’ for 
the earth in the sense intended (that of bulk) is 
not only thirteen but forty-nine times larger than 
the moon. A similar objection applies to the five or 
six concluding pages of the pamphlet, where, by way 
of introduction to some discoveries in Saturn, the 
philosophical correspondent is made to give a minute 
schoolboy account of that planet—an account quite 
supererogatory, it might be presumed, in the case 
of “The Edinburgh Journal of Science,” 


196 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


But there is one point, in especial, which should 
have instantly betrayed the fiction. Let us imagine 
the power really possessed of seeing animals on the 
moon’s surface—what in such case would first arrest 
the attention of an observer from the earth? Cer- 
tainly neither the shape, size, nor any other peculi- 
arity in these animals so soon as their remarkable 
position—they would seem to be walking heels up 
and head down. after the fashion of flies on a ceiling, 
The real observer (however prepared by previous 
knowledge) would have commented on this odd 
phenomenon before proceeding to other details; 
the fictitious observer has not even alluded to the 
subject but in the case of the man-bats speaks of 
seeing their entire bodies, when it is demonstrable 
that he could have seen little more than the appar- 
ently flat hemisphere of the head. 

I may as well observe, in conclusion, that the size, 
and especially the powers of the man-bats, (for ex- 
ample, their ability to fly in so rare an atmosphere— 
if, indeed, the moon has any,) with most of the other 
fancies in regard to animal and vegetable existence, 
are at variance generally with all analogical reason- 
ing on these themes, and that analogy here will often 
amount to the most positive demonstration. The 
temperature of the moon, for instance, is rather 
above that of boiling water, and Mr. Locke, conse- 
quently, has committed a serious oversight in not 
representing his man-bats, his bisons, his game of 
all kinds—to say nothing of his vegetables—as each 
and all done to a turn. 

It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to add, that all 
the suggestions attributed to Brewster and Hers- 
chell in the beginning of the hoax, about the ‘‘trans- 
fusion of artificial light through the focal object of 
vision,’ etc., etc., belong to that species of figur- 


RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE 197 


ative writing which comes. most properly under 
the head of rigmarole. There is a real and very 
definite limit to optical discovery among the stars. 
a limit whose nature need only be stated to be under- 
stood. If, indeed, the casting of large lenses were 
all that is required, the ingenuity of man would ulti- 
mately prove equal to the task, and we might have 
them of any size demanded;* but, unhappily, in pro- 
portion to the increase of size in the lens, and conse- 
quently of space-penetrating power, is the diminu- 
tion of light from the object by diffusion of the rays. 
And for this evil there is no remedy within human 
reach; for an object is seen by means of that light 
alone, whether direct or reflected, which proceeds 
from the object itself. Thus the only artificial light 
which could avail Mr. Locke, would be such as he 
should be able to throw, not upon “‘the focal object 
of vision,’ but upon the moon. It has been easily 
calculated that when the light proceeding from a 
heavenly body becomes so diffused as to be as weak 
as the natural light given out by the stars collec- 
tively in a clear, moonless night, then the heavenly 
body for any practical purpose is no longer visible. 

The singular blunders to which I have referred 
being properly understood, we shall have all the 
better reason for wonder at the prodigious success of 
the hoax. Not one person in ten discredited it, and 
(strangest point of all!) the doubters were chiefly 
those who doubted without being able to say why— 
the ignorant, those uninformed in astronomy, people 
who would not believe because the thing was so novel, 


*Neither of the Herschells dreamed of the possibility of a 
speculum six feet in diameter, and now the marvel has been 
triumphantly accomplished by Lord Rosse. There is, in fact, 
no physical tmpossibility in our casting lenses of even fift 
feet diameter or more. A sufficiency of means and skill 4s 
all that is demanded. 


198 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


so entirely ‘‘out of the usual way.” <A grave pro- 
fessor of mathematics in a Virginian college told 
me seriously that he had no doubt of the truth of the 
whole affair! The great effect wrought upon the 
public mind is referable, first, to the novelty of the 
idea; secondly, to the fancy-exciting and reason- 
repressing character of the alleged discoveries; 
thirdly, to the consummate tact with which the 
deception was brought forth; fourthly, to the ex- 
quisite vraisemblance of the narration. The hoax 
was circulated to an immense extent, was translated 
into various languages—was even made the subject 
of (quizzical) discussion in astronomical societies; 
drew down upon itself the grave denunciation of 
Dick, and was, upon the whole, decidedly the great- 
est Hit in the way of sensation—of merely popular 
sensation—ever made by any similiar fiction either in 
America or in Europe. | 

Having read the Moon story to an end, and found - 
it anticipative of all the main points of my ‘‘Hans 
Pfaall,”’ I suffered the latter to remain unfinished. 
The chief design in carrying my hero to the moon 
was to afford him an opportunity of describing the 
lunar scenery, but I found that he could add very 
little to the minute and authentic account of Sir 
John Herschell. The first part of ‘‘Hans Pfaall,” 
occupying about eighteen pages of ‘‘The Messenger,” 
embraced merely a journal of the passage between 
the two orbs, and a few words of general observa- 
tion on the most obvious features of the satellite; 
the second part will most probably never appear. 
I did not think it advisable even to bring my voyager 
back to his parent earth. He remains where I left 
him, and is still, I believe, ‘‘the man in the moon.” 

From the epoch of the hoax ‘‘The Sun” shone 
with unmitigated splendor. The start thus given 


RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE 199 


the paper insured it a triumph; it has now a daily 
circulation of not far from fifty thousand copies, 
and is, therefore, probably, the most really influen- 
tial journal of its kind in the wo.id. Its success 
firmly established “‘the penny system” throughout 
_ the country, and (through ‘‘The Sun’’) consequently, 
we are indebted to the genius of Mr. Locke for one of 
the most important steps ever yet taken in the path- 
way of human progress. 

On dissolving, about a year afterwards, his con- 
nexion with Mr. Beach, Mr. Locke established a 
political daily paper, “‘The New Era,” conducting it 
with distinguished ability. In this journal he made, 
very unwisely, an attempt at a second hoax, giving 
the finale of the adventures of Mungo Park in Africa 
—the writer pretending to have come into possession, 
by some accident, of the lost MSS. of the traveller. 
No one, however, seemed to be deceived, (Mr. Locke’s 
columns were a suspected district,) and the adven- 
tures were never brought to an end. They were 
richly imaginative. 

The next point made by their author was the 
getting up a book on magnetism as the premum 
mobile of the universe, in connexion with Doctor 
Sherwood, the practitioner of magnetic remedies. 
The more immediate purpose of the treatise was the 
setting forth a new magnetic method of obtaining 
the longitude. The matter was brought before 
Congress and received with favorable attention. 
What definite action was had I know not. A re- 
view of the work appeared in ‘‘The Army and Navy 
Chronicle,’’ and made sad havoc of the whole proj- 
ect. It was enabled to do this, however, by attack- 
ing in detail the accuracy of some calculations of no 
very radical importance. These and others Mr. 
Locke is now engaged in carefully revising; and my 


506 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


own opinion is that his theory (which he has reached 
more by dint of imagination than of anything else) 
will finally be established, although, perhaps, never 
thoroughly by wm. 

His prose style is noticeable for its concision, 
luminousness, completeness—each quality in its 
proper place. He has that method so generally 
characteristic of genius proper. Everything he 
writes is a model in its peculiar way, serving just the 
purposes intended and nothing to spare. He has 
written some poetry, which, through certain radical 
misapprehensions, is not very good. 

Like most men of true imagination, Mr. Locke is a 
seemingly paradoxical compound of coolness and 
excitability. 

He is about five feet seven inches in height, sym- 
metrically formed; there is an air of distinction about 
his whole person—the azr noble of genius. His face 
is strongly pitted by the small-pox, and, perhaps. 
from the same cause, there is a marked obliquity in 
the eyes; a certain calm, clear luminousness, however, 
about these latter, amply compensates for the defect, 
and the forehead is truly beautiful in its intellec- 
tuality. JI am acquainted with no person possess- 
ing so fine a forehead as Mr. Locke. He is married, 
and about forty-five years of age, although no one 
would suppose him to be more than thirty-eight. 


He is a lineal descendant from the immortal author — 


of the ‘‘Essay on the Human Understanding.” 


ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH 201 


ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH* 


HIS is a very pretty little volume, neatly 
printed, handsomely bound, embracing some 
two hundred pages sixteen-mo. and intro- 

duced to the public, somewhat unnecessarily, in a 
preface by Dr. Rufus W. Griswold. In this preface 
we find some few memoranda of the personal au- 
thoress, with some critical opinions in relation to 
her poems. The memoranda are meagre. A much 
more interesting account of Mrs. Smith is given by 
Mr. John Neal, and was included by Mr. John Keese 
in the introduction to a former collection of her 
works. The critical opinions may as well be here 
quoted, at least in part. Dr. Griswold says: 


Seeking expression, yet shrinking from notoriety, and with 
a full share of that respect for a just fame and appreciation 
which belongs to every high-toned mind, yet oppressed by 
its shadow when circumstance is the impelling motive of 
publication, the writings of Mrs. Smith might well be 
supposed to betray great inequality; still in her many 
contributions to the magazines, it is remarkable how few 
of her pieces display the usual carelessness and haste of 
magazine articles. As an essayist especially, while graceful 
and lively, she is compact and vigorous; while through 
poems, essays, tales, and criticisms, (for her industrious 
pen seems quite equally skilful and happy in each of these 
departments of literature,) through all her manifold writ- 
ings, indeed, there runs the same beautiful vein of philoso- 
phy, viz.:—that truth and goodness of themselves impart 
a holy light to the mind which gives it a power far above 
mere intellectuality; that the highest order of human 


*The Poetical writings of Elizabeth Oakes Smith. First 
complete edition. New York. J. S. Redfield. 


202 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


intelligence springs from the moral and not the reasoning 
FACULLICS ioe an ieee Mrs. Smith’s most popular poem is “The 
Acorn,” which, though inferior in high inspiration to 
“The Sinless Child,” is by many preferred for its happy play 
of fancy and proper finish. Her sonnets, of which she has 
written many, have not yet been as much admired as the 
“April Rain,” “The Brook,” and other fugitive pieces, 
which we find in many popular collections. 


‘‘The Sinless Child’”’ was originally published in 
the ‘‘Southern Literary Messenger,’’ where it at once 
attracted much attention from the novelty of its 
conception and the general grace and purity of its 
style. Undoubtedly it is one of the most original of 
American poems—surpassed in this respect, we think, 
only by Maria del Occidente’s ‘‘ Bride of Seven.” Of 
course, we speak merely of long poems. We have 
had in this country many brief fugitive pieces far 
excelling in this most important point (originality) 
either ‘‘The Bride of Seven” or ‘*The Sinless Child”’ 
—far excelling, indeed, any transatlantic poems. 
After all, it is chiefly in works of what is absurdly 
termed ‘‘sustained effort” that we fall in any 
material respect behind our progenitors. 

‘The Sinless Child’”’ is quite long, including more 
than two hundred stanzas, generally of eight lines. 
The metre throughout is iambic tetrameter, alter- 
nating with trimeter—in other words, lines of four 
iambuses alternate with lines of three. ‘The varia- 
tions from this order are rare. The design of the 
poem is very imperfectly made out. The conception 
is much better than the execution. ‘‘A simple 
cottage maiden, Eva, given to the world in the 
widowhood of one parent and the angelic existence 
of. the other) .acup is found from her birth to beas 
meek and gentle as are those pale flowers that look 
imploringly upon us... . She is gifted with the 


ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH 203 


power of interpreting the beautiful mysteries of our 


rere ts Ga Fs, For her the song of the bird is not 
merely the gushing forth of a nature too full of 
blessedness to be silent .... the humblest plant, 


the simplest insect, is each alive withtruth..... 
She sees the world not merely with mortal eyes, but 
looks within to the pure internal life of which the out- 
ward is but a type,” etc., etc. These passages are 
taken from the Argument prefixed to Part I. The 
general thesis of the poetess may, perhaps, be stated 
as the demonstration that the superior wisdom is 
moral rather than intellectual; but it may be 
doubted whether her subject was ever precisely 
apparent to herself. In a word, she seems to have 
vacillated between several conceptions—the only 
very definite idea being that of extreme beauty and 
purity in a child. At one time we fancy her, for 
example, attempting to show that the condition of 
absolute sanctity is one through which mortality may 
know all things and hold converse with the angels; 
at another we suppose it her purpose to ‘‘create”’ 
(in critical language) an entirely novel being, a some- 
thing that is neither angel nor mortal, nor yet fairy 
in the ordinary sense—in a word, an original ens. 
Besides these two prominent fancies, however, there 
are various others which seem continually flitting in 
and out of the poet’s vision, so that her whole work 
has an indeterminate air. Of this she apparently be- 
comes conscious towards the conclusion, and in the 
final stanza endeavors to remedy the difficulty by 
summing up her design— 


The sinless child, with mission high, 
Awhile to earth was given, 

To show us that our world should be 
The vestibule of heaven, 


204 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Did we but in the holy light 
Of truth and goodness rise, 

We might communion hold with God 
And spirits from the skies. 


The conduct of the narrative is scarcely more 
determinate—if, indeed, ‘‘The Sinless Child’”’ can be 
said to include a narrative at all. The poem is oc- 
cupied in its first part with a description of the child, 
her saintly character, her lone wanderings, the lessons 
she deduces from all animal and vegetable things, and 
her communings with the angels. We have then 
discussions with her mother, who is made to introduce 
episodical tales, one of ‘‘Old Richard,” another called 
‘‘The Defrauded Heart,’ (a tale of a miser,) and 
another entitled ‘‘The Stepmother.”’ ‘Towards the 
end of the poem a lover, Alfred Linne, is brought 
upon the scene. He has been reckless and sinful, but 
is reclaimed by the heavenly nature of Eva. He 
finds her sleeping in a forest. At this point occur 
some of the finest and most characteristic passages 
of the poem. 


Unwonted thought, unwonted calm 
Upon his spirit fell; 

For he unwittingly had sought 
Young Eva’s hallowed dell, 

And breathed that atmosphere of love, 
Around her path that grew: 

That evil from her steps repelled 
The good unto her drew. 


Mem.—The last quatrain of this stanza would have 
been readily comprehended if punctuated and written 
thus— 


And breathed that atmosphere of love 
Around her path that grew— 

That evil from her steps repelled— 
That good unto her drew. 


ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH 208 


We may as well observe here, too, that although 
neatly printed, the volume abounds in typographical 
errors that very frequently mar the sense—as at page 
66, for example, where come (near the bottom) is 
improperly used for came, and scortching (second line 
from the top) is substituted for searching. We pro- 
ceed with Alfred’s discovery of Eva in the wood. 


Now Eva opes her child-like eyes 
And lifts her tranquil head; 

And Albert, like a guilty thing, 
Had from her presence fled. 

But Eva marked his troubled brow, 
His sad and thoughtful eyes, 

As if they sought yet shrank to hold 
Their converse with the skies. 


Communion with the skies—would have been far 
better. It seems strange to us that any one should 
have overlooked the word. 


And all her kindly nature stirred, 
She prayed him to remain; 
Well conscious that the pure have power 
To balm much human pain. 
‘There mingled too, as in a dream, 
About brave Albert Linne, 
A real and ideal form 
Her soul had formed within. 


We give the punctuation here as we find it;—it is 
incorrect throughout, interfering materially with a 
proper understanding of the passage. There should 
be a comma after ‘‘And”’ in the first line, a comma 
in place of the semicolon at the end of the second line, 
no point at the end of the third line, a comma after 
‘‘mingled,’’ and none after ‘‘form.’’ ‘These seeming 
minutre are of real importance; but we refer to them, 
in case of ‘‘The Sinless Child,’ because here the 


206 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


ageregate of this species of minor eror is unusually 
remarkable. Of course it is the proof-reader or 
editor, and not Mrs. Smith, who is to blame. 


Her trusting hand fair Eva laid 
In that of Albert Linne, 

And for one trembling moment turned 
Her gentle thoughts within. 

Deep tenderness was in the glance 
That rested on his face, 

As if her woman-heart had found 
Its own abiding-place. 


And evermore to him it seemed 
Her voice more liquid grew— 
*‘Dear youth, thy soul and mine are one? 
One source their being drew! 
And they must mingle evermore— 
Thy thoughts of love and me 
Will, as a light, thy footsteps guide 
To life and mystery.” 


There was a sadness in her tone, 
But love unfathomed deep; 
As from the centre of the soul 
Where the divine may sleep; 
Prophetic was the tone and look, 
And Albert’s noble heart 
Sank with a strange foreboding dread 
Lest Eva should depart. 


And when she bent her timid eyes 
As she beside him knelt, 

The pressure of her sinless lips 
Upon his brow he felt, 

And all of earth and all of sin 
Fled from her sainted side; 

She, the pure virgin of the soul, 
Ordained young Albert’s bride. 


It would, perhaps, have been out of keeping with 
the more obvious plan of the poem to make Eva 


ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH 207 


really the bride of Albert. She does not wed him, 
but dies tranquilly in bed, soon after the spiritual 
union in the forest. ‘‘Eva,” says the Argument of 
Part VII, ‘hath fulfilled her destiny. Material thing 
can no farther minister to the growth of her spirit. 
That waking of the soul to its own deep mysteries— 
its oneness with another—has been accomplished. 
A human soul is perfected.’’ At this point the poem 
may be said to have its conclusion. 

In looking back at its general plan, we cannot fail 
to see traces of high poetic capacity. The first point 
to be commended is the reach or aim of the poetess. 
She is evidently discontented with the bald routine of 
common-place themes, and originality has been with 
her a principal object. In all cases of fictitious com- 
position it should be the first object—by which we do 
not mean to say that it can ever be considered as the 
most important. But, certeris paribus, every class 
of fiction is the better for originality; every writer 
is false to his own interest if he fails to avail himself, 
at the outset, of the effect which is certainly and 
invariably derivable from the great element, 
novelty. 

The execution of ‘‘The Sinless Child’ is, as we have 
already said, inferior to its conception—that is, to its 
conception as it floated, rather than steadily existed, 
in the brain of the authoress. She enables us to see 
that she has very narrowly missed one of those happy 
‘“‘creations” which now and then immortalize the 
poet. With a good deal more of deliberate thought 
before putting pen to paper, with a good deal more of 
the constructive ability, and with more rigorous 
discipline in the minor merits of style, and of what is 
termed in the school-prospectuses, composition, Mrs. 
Smith would have made of ‘‘The Sinless Child”’ one of 
the best, if not the very best of American poems. 


208 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


While speaking of the execution, or, more properly, 
the conduct of the work, we may as well mention, 
first, the obviousness with which the stories intro- 
duced by Eva’s mother areinterpolated, or episodical ; 
it is permitted every reader to see that they have no 
natural connexion with the true theme; and, indeed, 
there can be no doubt that they were written long 
before the main narrative was projected. In the 
second place, we must allude to the artificiality of 
the Arguments, or introductory prose passages, prefa- 
cing each Part of the poem. Mrs. Smith had no 
sounder reason for employing them than Milton and 
the rest of the epicists have employed them before. 
If it be said that they are necessary for the proper 
comprehension of a poem, we reply that this is saying 
nothing for them, but merely much against the poem 
which demands them as a necessity. Every work 
of art should contain within itself all that is required 
for its own comprehension. An ‘‘argument”’ is but 
another form of the ‘‘This is an ox”’ subjoined to the 
portrait of an animal with horns. But in making 
these objections to the management of ‘‘The Sinless 
Child,’’ we must not be understood as insisting upon 
them as at all material, in view of the lofty merit of 
originality—a merit which pervades and invigorates 
the whole work, and which, in our opinion, at least, is 
far, very far more than sufficient to compensate for 
every inartisticality of construction. A work of art 
may be admirably constructed, and yet be null as 
regards every essentiality of that truest art which 
is but the happiest development of nature; but no 
work of art can embody within itself a proper origi- 
nality without giving the plainest manifestations of 
the creative spirit, or, in more common parlance, of 
gentus in its author. The originality of ‘‘The Sinless 
Child’? would cover a multitude of greater defects 


ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH 209 


than Mrs. Smith ever committed, and must forever 
entitle it to the admiration and respect of every 
competent critic. 

As regards detached passages, we think that the 
episode of ‘‘The Stepmother” may be fairly cited 
as the best in the poem. 


You speak of Hobert’s second wife, a lofty dame and bold; 

I like not her forbidding air, and forehead high and cold. 

The orphans have no cause for grief; she dare not give it now, 

Though nothing but a ghostly fear her heart of pride could 
bow. 


One night the boy his mother called; they heard him weep- 
ing say, 

“Sweet mother, kiss poor Eddy’s cheek and wipe his tears 
away.” 

Red grew the lady’s brow with rage, and yet she feels a strife 

Of anger and of terror, too, at thought of that dead wife. 


Wild roars the wind; the lights burn blue; the watch-dog 
howls with fear; 

Loud neighs the steed from out the stall. What form is 
gliding near? 

No latch is raised, no step is heard, but a phantom fills the 
space— 

A sheeted spectre from the dead, with cold and leaden face. 


What boots it that no other eye beheld the shade appear? 

The guilty lady’s guilty soul beheld it plain and clear. 

It slowly glides within the room and sadly looks around, 

And, stooping, kissed her daughter’s cheek with lips that 
gave no sound. 


Then softly on the step-dame’s arm she laid a death-cold 
hand, 

Yet it hath scorched within the flesh like to a burning brand; 

And gliding on with noiseless foot, o’er winding stair and 
hall, 

She nears the chamber where is heard her infant’s trembling 
call, 

VoL. V—14 a 


210 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


She smoothed the pillow where he lay, she warmly tucked 
the bed, 

She wiped his tears and stroked the curls that clustered 
round his head. 

The child, caressed, unknowing fear, hath nestled him to rest; 

The mother folds her wings beside—the mother from the 
blest! 


The metre of this episode has been altered from its 
original form, and, we think, improved by the altera- 
tion. Formerly, in place of four lines of seven iam- 
buses, the stanza consisted of eight lines—a line of 
four iambuses alternating with one of three—a more 
ordinary and artificial, therefore a less desirable 
arrangement. In the three last quatrains there is 
an awkward vacillation between the present and 
perfect tenses, as in the words “beheld,” ‘‘glides,” 
‘‘kissed,”’ ‘‘laid,’’ ‘‘hath scorched,’ ‘‘smoothed,”’ 
‘“‘wiped,’’ “‘hath nestled,” “‘folds.”’ These petty 
objections, of course, will by no means interfere with | 
the reader’s appreciation of the episode, with his 
admiration of its pathos, its delicacy and its grace— 
we had almost forgotten to say of its pure and high 
imagination. 

We proceed to cull from ‘‘The Sinless Child,” a few 
brief but happy passages at random. 


Gentle she was and full of love, 
With voice exceeding sweet, 

And eyes of dove-like tenderness 
Where joy and sadness meet, 








with calm and tranquil eye 
That turned instinctively to seek 
The blueness of the sky. 





Bright missals from angelic throngs 
In every bye-way left— 

How were the earth of glory shorn 
Were it of flowers bereft! 





ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH 211 


And wheresoe’er the weary heart 
Turns in its dim despair, 

The meek-eyed blossom upward looks 
Inviting tt to prayer. 





The very winds were hushed to peace 
Within the quiet dell, 

Or murmured through the rustling bough 
Like breathings of a shell. 





The mystery of life; 
Its many hopes, its many fears 
Its sorrow and its strife— 
A spirit to behold in all 
To guide, admonish, cheer,- 
Forever, in all time and place, 
To feel an angel near. 





I may not scorn the spirit’s rights, 
For I have seen it rise, 

All written o’er with thought, thought, thought 
As with a thousand eyes! 





And there are things that blight the soul 
As with a mildew blight, 

And in the temple of the Lord 
Put out the blessed light. 


It is in the point of passages such as these, in their 
vigor, terseness and novelty, combined with exquisite 
delicacy, that the more obvious merit of the poem 
consists. A thousand such quotable paragraphs are 
interspersed through the work, and of themselves 
would be sufficient to insure its popularity. But we 
repeat that a far loftier excellence lies perdu amid the 
minor deficiencies of ‘‘The Sinless Child.” | 

The other poems of the volume are, as entire 
compositions, nearer perfection, but, in general, have 
less of the true poetical element. ‘‘The Acorn”’ is 
perfect as regards its construction—although, to be 


212 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


sure, the design is so simple that it could scarcely be 
marred in its execution. The idea is the old one of 
detailing the progress of a plant from its germ to its 
maturity, with the uses and general vicissitudes to 
which it is subjected. In this case of the acorn the 
vicissitudes are well imagined, and the execution 
is more skilfully managed—is more definite, vigor- 
ous and pronounced, than in the longer poem. The 
chief of the minor objections is to the rhythm, which 
is imperfect, vacillating awkwardly between iambuses 
and anapests, after such fashion that it is impossible 
to decide whether the rhythm in itself—that is, 
whether the general intention is anapestical or 
iambic. Anapzsts introduced, for the relief of mono- 
tone, into an iambic rhythm, are not only admissible 
but commendable, if not absolutely demanded; but 
in this case they prevail to such an extent as to 
overpower the iambic intention, thus rendering the 
whole versification difficult of comprehension. We 
give, by way of example, a stanza with the scanning 
divisions and quantities: 


They came | with gifts | that should life | bestow oT 
The dew | and the li | ving air— | 

The bane | that should work | its dead | ly Wo, | 
The lit | tle men | had there; | 

In the gray | moss cup | was the mil | dew brought, | 
The worm | in a rose- | leaf rolled, | 

And ma | ny things | with destruc | tion fraught | 
That its doom | were quick | ly told. | 

Here iambuses and anapests are so nearly balanced 


that the ear hesitates to receive the rhythm as either 
anapeestic or iambic, that is, it hesitates to receive 


ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH an 


it as anything at all. A rhythm should always be 
distinctly marked by its first foot—that is to say, 
if the design is iambic, we should commence with an 
unmistakable iambus, and proceed with this foot un- 
til the ear gets fairly accustomed to it before we 
attempt variation; for which, indeed, there is no 
necessity unless for the relief of monotone. When 
the rhythm is in this manner thoroughly recognized, 
we may sparingly vary with anapests (or, if the 
rhythm be trochaic, with dactyls). Spondees, still 
more sparingly, as absolute discords, may be also 
introduced either in an iambic or trochaic rhythm. 
In common with a very large majority of American, 
and, indeed, of European poets, Mrs. Smith seems to 
be totally unacquainted with the principles of versi- 
fication—by which, of course, we mean its rationale. 
Of technical rules on the subject there are rather 
more than enough in our prosodies, and from these 
abundant rules are deduced the abundant blunders 
of our poets. There is not a prosody in existence 
which is worth the paper on which it is printed. 

Of the miscellaneous poems included in the volume 
before us, we greatly prefer “‘The Summons An- 
swered.” It has more of power, more of genuine 
imagination than anything written by its author. 
It is a story of three ‘‘bacchanals,” who, on their 
way from the scene of their revelry, are arrested by 
the beckoning of a white hand from the partially un- 
closing door of atomb. One of the party obeys the 
summons. It is the tomb of his wife. We quote 
the two concluding stanzas: 


This restless life with its little fears, 
Its hopes that fade so soon, 

With its yearning tenderness and tears, 

And the burning agony that sears— 
The sun gone down at noon— 


214 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


The spirit crushed to its prison wall, 
Mindless of all beside— 

This young Richard saw, and felt it all— 
Well might the dead abide! 


The crimson light in the east is high, 
The hoar-frost coldly gleams, 

And Richard chilled to the heart well-nigh, 

Hath raised his wildered and bloodshot eye 
From that long night of dreams. 

He shudders to think of the reckless band 
And the fearful oath he swore— 

But most he thinks of the clay-cold hand, 
That opened the old tomb door. 


With the quotation of these really noble passages— 
noble, because full of the truest poetic energy—we 
take leave of the fair authoress. She is entitled, 
beyond doubt, to all, and perhaps to much more 
than the commendation she has received. Her 
faults are among the peccadilloes, and her merits — 
among the sterling excellencies of the muse. 


J. G. C. BRAINARD 215 


J. G. C. BRAINARD 


MONG all the pioneers of American litera- 
ture, whether prose or poetical, thereis not one 
whose productions have not been much 

overrated by his countrymen. But this fact is more 
especially obvious in respect to such of these pioneers 
as are no longer living,—nor is it a fact of so deeply 
transcendental a nature as only to be accounted for by 
the Emersons and Alcotts. In the first place, we have 
but to consider that gratitude, surprise, and a species 
of hyper-patriotic triumph have been blended, and 
finally confounded with mere admiration, or appre- 
ciation, in respect to the labors of our earlier writers; 
and, in the second place, that Death has thrown his 
customary veil of the sacred over these commingled 
feelings, forbidding them, in a measure, to be now 
separated or subjected to analysis. ‘‘In speaking of 
the deceased,’’ says that excellent old English 
Moralist, James Puckle, in his ‘‘Gray Cap for a Green 
Head,” so fold up your discourse that their virtues 
may be outwardly shown, while their vices are 
wrapped up in silence.’”’ And with somewhat too 
inconsiderate a promptitude have we followed the 
spirit of this quaint advice. The mass of American 
readers have been, hitherto, in no frame of mind 
to view with calmness, and to discuss with discrimi- 
nation, the true claims of the few who were first in 
convincing the mother country that her sons were 
not all brainless, as, in the plenitude of her arrogance, 
she, at one period, half affected and half wished 
to believe; and where any of these few have departed 


216 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


from among us, the difficulty of bringing their 
pretentions to the test of a proper criticism has been 
enhanced in a very remarkable degree. But even as 
concerns the living: is there any one so blind as not to 
see that Mr. Cooper, for example, owes much, and 
that Mr. Paulding owes all of his reputation as a — 
novelist, to his early occupation of the field? Is there 
any one so dull as not to know that fictions which 
neither Mr. Paulding nor Mr. Cooper could have 
written, are daily published by native authors with- 
out attracting more of commendation than can be 
crammed into a hack newspaper paragraph? And, 
again, is there any one so prejudiced as not to 
acknowledge that all this is because there is no longer 
either reason or wit in the query,—‘‘ Who reads an 
American book?’ It is not because we lack the 
talent in which the days of Mr. Paulding exulted, but 
because such talent has shown itself to be common. 
It is not because we have no Mr. Coopers; but because. 
it has been demonstrated that we might, at any mo- 
ment, have as many Mr. Coopers as we please. In 
fact we are now strong in our own resources. We 
have, at length, arrived at that epoch when our 
literature may and must stand on its own merits, or 
fall through its own defects. We have snapped ’ 
asunder the leading-strings of our British Grand- 
mamma, and, better still, we have survived the first 
hours of our novel freedom,—the first licentious hours — 
of a hobbledehoy braggadocio and swagger. Az last, 
then, we are in a condition to be criticised—even — 
more, to be neglected; and the journalist is no longer 
in danger of being impeached for lese majesté of the 
Democratic Spirit, who shall assert, with sufficient 
humility, that we have committed an error in mis- 
taking ‘‘Kettell’s Specimens” for the Pentateuch, or 
Joseph Rodman Drake for Apollo. 


J. G. C. BRAINARD 217 


The case of this latter gentleman is one which well 
illustrates what we have been saying. We believe it 
was about 1835 that Mr. Dearborn republished the 
“Culprit Fay,” which then, as at the period of its 
_ original issue, was belauded by the universal Ameri- 
can press, in a manner which must have appeared 
ludicrous—not to speak very plainly—in the eyes 
of all unprejudiced observers. With a curiosity 
much excited by comments at once so grandiloquent 
and so general, we procured and read the poem. 
What we found it we ventured to express distinctly, 
and at some length, in the pages of the ‘‘Southern 
Messenger.” It is a well versified and sufficiently 
fluent composition, without high merit of any kind. 
Its defects are gross and superabundant. Its plot 
and conduct, considered in reference to its scene, are 
absurd. Its originality is none at all. Its imagina- 
tion (and this was the great feature insisted upon by 
its admirers,) is but a ‘‘counterfeit presentment,’’— 
but the shadow of the Shade of that lofty quality 
which is, in fact, the soul of the Poetic Sentiment— 
but a drivelling effort to be fanciful—an effort resulting 
in a species of hop-skip-and-go-merry rhodomontade, 
which the uninitiated feel it a duty to call ideality, 
and to admire as such, while lost in surprise at the 
impossibility of performing at least the latter half of 
the duty with any thing like satisfaction to them- 
selves. And all this we not only asserted, but with- 
out difficulty proved. Dr. Drake has written some 
beautiful poems, but the ‘‘Culprit Fay,’ is not of 
them. We neither expected to hear any dissent 
from our opinions, nor did we hear any. On the 
contrary, the approving voice of every critic in the 
country whose dictum we had been ascustomed to 
respect, was to us a sufficient assurance that we 
had not been very grossly in the wrong. In fact the 


218 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


public taste was then approaching the right. The 
truth indeed had not, as yet, made itself heard; but 
we had reached a point at which it had but to be 
plainly and boldly put, to be, at least tacitly admitted. 
This habit of apotheosising our literary pioneers 
was a most indiscriminating one. Upon all who 
wrote, the applause was plastered with an impar- 
tiality really refreshing. Of course, the system 
favored the dunces at the expense of true merit! 
and, since there existed a certain fixed standard of 
exaggerated commendation to which all were 
adapted after the fashion of Procrustes, it is clear that 
the most meritorious required the least stretching,— 
in other words, that although all were much over- 
rated, the deserving were overrated in a less degree 
than the unworthy. Thus with Brainard:—a man 
of indisputable genius, who, in any more discriminate 
system of panegyric, would have been long ago be- 
puffed into Demi-Deism; for if ‘‘M’Fingal,” for 
example, is in reality what we have been told, the 
commentators upon Trumbull, as a matter of the 
simplest consistency, should have exalted into the 
seventh heaven of poetical dominion the author of 
the many graceful and vigorous effusions which are 
now lying, in a very neat little volume, before us.* 
Yet we maintain that even these effusions have 
been overpraised, and materially so. It is not that 
Brainard has not written poems which may rank 
with those of any American, with the single excep- 
tion of Longfellow—but that the general merit of 
our whole national Muse has been estimated too 
highly, and that the author of ‘‘The Connecticut 
River” has, individually, shared in the exaggeration. — 


*The Poems of John G. C. Brainard. A New and Authentic 
Collection, with an original Memoir of his Life. Hartford: 
Edward Hopkins. 


J. G. C. BRAINARD 219 


No poet among us has composed what would de- 
serve the tithe of that amount of approbation so 
innocently lavished upon Brainard. But it would 
not suit our purpose just now, to enter into any 
elaborate analysis of his productions. It so happens, 
however, that we open the book at a brief poem, an 
examination of which will stand us in good stead of 
this general analysis, since it is by this very poem 
that the admirers of its author are content to swear 
—since it is the fashion to cite it as his best—since 
thus, in short, it is the chief basis of his notoriety, 
if not the surest triumph of his fame. 

We allude to ‘‘The Fall of Niagara,’’ and shall be 
pardoned for quoting it in full. 


The thoughts are strange that crowd into my brain 
While I look upward to thee. It would seem 

As if God poured thee from his hollow hand, 

And hung his brow upon thy awful front, 

And spoke in that loud voice which seemed to him 
Who dwelt in Patmos for his Saviour’s sake 

The “sound of many waters’’ and had bade 

Thy flood to chronicle the ages back 

And notch his centuries in the eternal rocks. 


Deep calleth unto deep. And what are we 

That hear the question of that voice sublime? 

O, what are all the notes that ever rung 

From war’s vain trumpet by thy thundering side? 
Yea, what is all the riot man can make 

In his short life to thy unceasing roar? 

And yet, bold babbler, what art thou to HIM 

Who drowned a world and heaped the waters far 
Above its loftiest mountains?—a light wave 
That breaks and whispers of its Maker’s might. 


It is a very usual thing to hear these verses 
called not merely the best of their author, but the 
best which have been written on the subject of 
Niagara. Its positive merit appears to us only 


220 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


partial. We have been informed that the poet had 
seen the great cataract before writing the lines; but 
the Memoir prefixed to the present edition, denies 
what, for our own part, we never believed, for 
Brainard was truly a poet, and no poet could have 
looked upon Niagara, in the substance, and written 
thus about it. If he saw it at all, it must have been 
in fancy—‘‘at a distance’’—e«as—as the lying Pindar 
says he saw Archilocus, who died ages before the 
villain was born 

To the two opening verses we have no objection; 
but it may be well observed, in passing, that had the 
mind of the poet been really ‘‘crowned with strange 
thoughts,” and not merely engaged in an endeavor to 
think, he would have entered at once upon the 
thoughts themselves, without allusion to the state 
of his brain. His subject would have left him no 
room for self. 

The third line embodies an absurd, and im- | 
possible, not to say a contemptible image. We are 
called upon to conceive a similarity between the 
continuous downward sweep of Niagara, and the 
momentary splashing of some definite and of course 
trifling quantity of water from a hand; for, although 
it is the hand of the Deity himself which is referred 
to, the mind is irresistibly led, by the words ‘‘poured 
from his hollow hand,” to that idea which has been 
customarily attached to such phrase. It is needless 
to say, moreover, that the bestowing upon Deity 
a human form. is at best a low and most unideal 
conception.* In fact the poet has committed the 


*The Humanitarians held that God was to be understood as 
having really a human form—See Clarke’s Sermons, vol. I. 
page 26, fol. edit. 

‘‘The drift of Milton’s argument leads him to employ 
language which would appear, at first sight, to verge upon their 
doctrine: but it will be seen immediately that he guards himself 
against the charge of having adopted one of the most ignorant 


J. G. C. BRAINARD 221 


srossest of errors in likening the fall to any mate- 
rial object; for the human fancy can fashion nothing 
which shall not be inferior in majesty to the cataract 
itself. Thus bathos is inevitable; and there is no 
better exemplification of bathos than Mr. Brainard 
has here given.* 

The fourth line but renders the matter worse, for 
here the figure is most inartistically shifted. The 
handful of water becomes animate; for it has a front 
—that is, a forehead, and upon this forehead the 
Deity proceeds to hang a bow, that is, a rainbow. 
At the same time he “‘speaks in that loud voice,” 
&c.; and here it is obvious that the ideas of the 
writer are in a sad state of fluctuation; for he trans- 
fers the idiosyncrasy of the fall itself (that is to say 
its sound) to the one who pours it from his hand. 
But not content with all this, Mr. Brainard com- 
mands the flood to keep a kind of tally; for this is the 
low thought which the expression about ‘‘notching 
in the rocks” immediately and inevitably induces. 
The whole of this first division of the poem, embraces, 
we hesitate not to say, one of the most jarring, inap- 
propriate, mean, and in every way monstrous as- 
semblages of false imagery, which can be found out 
of the tragedies of Nat Lee, or the farces of Thomas 
Carlyle. 


errors of the dark ages of the church.”—Dr. Summer’s Notes 
on Milton’s ‘‘Christian Doctrine.”’ 

The opinion could never have been very general. Andens, a 
Syrian of Mesopotamia, who lived in the fourth century, was 
condemned for the doctrine, as heretical. His few disciples 
were called Anthropmorphites.—See Du Pin. 

*It is remarkable that Drake, of whose ‘‘Culprit Fay” we 
have just spoken is, perhaps, the sole poet who has employed. 
in the description of Niagara, imagery which does not produce 
a pathetic impression. In one of his minor poems he has 
these magnificent lines: 


How sweet ’twould be, when all the air 
In moonlight swims, along the river 


222 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


In the latter division, the poet recovers himself, 
as if ashamed of his previous bombast. His natural 
instinct (for Brainard was no artist) has enabled him 
to feel that subjects which surpass in grandeur all 
efforts of the human imagination are well depicted 
only in the simplest and least metaphorical language— 
a proposition as susceptible of demonstration as any 
in Euclid. Accordingly, we find a material sinking 
in tone; although he does not at once discard all 
imagery. The ‘Deep calleth unto deep” is never- 
theless a great improvement upon his previous 
rhetoricianism. The personification of the waters 
above and below would be good in reference to any 
subject less august. The moral reflections which 
immediately follow, have at least the merit of 
simplicity; but the poet exhibits no very lofty im- 
agination when he bases these reflections only upon 
the cataract’s superiority to man 7n the notse it can 
create; nor is the concluding idea more spirited, 


To couch upon the grass and hear 
Niagara’s everlasting voice 

Far in the deep blue West away; 
That dreamy and poetic noise 

We mark not in the glare of day— 
Oh, how unlike its torrent-cry 

When o’er the brink the tide is driven 
As if the vast and sheeted sky 

In thunder fell from Heaven! 


where the mere difference between the quantity of 
water which occasioned the flood, and the quantity 
which Niagara precipitates, is made the measure of 
the Almighty Mind’s superiority to that cataract 
which it called by a thought into existence. 

But although “The Fall of Niagara’? does not 
deserve all the unmeaning commendation it has 
received, there are, nevertheless, many truly beauti- 


J. G. C. BRAINARD 223 


ful poems in this collection, and even more certain 
evidences of poetic power. ‘‘To a Child, the 
Daughter of a Friend” is exceedingly graceful and 
terse. “‘To the Dead” has equal grace, with more 
vigor, and, moreover, a touching air of melancholy. 
Its melody is very rich, and in the monotonous repe- 
tition, at each stanza, of a certain rhyme, we recog- 
nise a fantastic yet true imagination. ‘‘Mr. Merry’s 
Lament for Long Tom” would be worthy of all 
praise were not its unusually beautiful rhythm an 
imitation from Campbell, who would deserve his 
high poetical rank, if only for its construction. Of 
the merely humorous pieces we have little to say. 
Such things are not poetry. Mr. Brainard excelled 
in them, and they are very good in their place; but 
that place isnotin acollection of poems. The preva- 
lent notions upon this head are extremely vague; 
yet we see no reason why any ambiguity should 
exist. Humor, with an exception to be made here- 
after, is directly antagonistical to that which is the 
soul of the Muse proper; and the omni-prevalent 
belief, that melancholy is inseparable from the higher 
manifestations of the beautiful, is not without a firm 
basis in nature and in reason. But it so happens 
that humor and that quality which we have termed 
the soul of the Muse (imagination) are both es- 
sentially aided in their development by the same 
adventitious assistance—that of rhythm and of 
rhyme. Thus the only bond between humorous 
verse and poetry, properly so called, is that they em- 
ploy in common, a certain tool. But this single 
circumstance has been sufficient to occasion, and to 
maintain through long ages, a confusion of two very 
distinct ideas in the brain of the unthinking critic. 
There is, nevertheless, an individual branch of 
humor which blends so happily with the ideal, that 


224 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


from the union result some of the finest effects of 
legitimate poesy. We allude to what is termed 
‘“‘archness”—a trait with which popular feeling, 
which is unfailingly poetic, has invested, for example, 
the whole character of the fairy. In the volume 
before us there is a brief composition entitled ‘‘The 
Tree Toad’? which will afford a fine exemplification 
of our idea. It seems to have been hurriedly con- 
structed, as if its author had felt ashamed of his 
light labor. But that in his heart there was a secret 
exultation over these verses for which his reason 
found it difficult to account, we know; and there is 
not a really imaginative man within sound of our 
voice to-day, who, upon perusal of this little ‘‘Tree 
Toad” will not admit it t> be one of the truest poems 
ever written by Brainard. 


RUFUS DAWES 225 


RUFUS DAWES 


4 S a poet,” says Mr. Griswold, in his ‘‘ Poets 

and Poetry of America,” ‘‘the standing of 

Mr. Dawesisas yet unsettled; there being a 
wide difference of opinion respecting his writings.’ 
The width of this difference is apparent; and, while 
to many it is matter for wonder, to those ‘who have 
the interest of our Literature at heart, it is, more 
properly, a source of mortification and regret. That 
the author in question has long enjoyed what we 
term ‘‘a high poetical reputation,” cannot be denied; 
and in no manner is this point more strikingly 
evinced than in the choice of his works, some two 
years since, by one of our most enterprising publish- 
ers, as the initial volume of a series, the avowed 
object of which was the setting forth, in the best 
array of paper, type, and pictorial embellishment, 
the élite of the American poets. As a writer of oc- 
casional stanzas he has been long before the public; 
always eliciting, from a great variety of sources, 
unqualified commendation. With the exception 
of a solitary remark, adventured by ourselves in 
“A Chapter on Autography,” there has been no 
written dissent from the universal opinion in his 
favor—the universal apparent opinion. Mr. Gris- 
wold’s observation must be understood, we presume, 
as referring to the conversational opinion upon this 
topic; or it is not impossible that he holds in view 
the difference between the criticism of the news- 
paper paragraphs and the private comment of the 
educated and intelligent. Be this as it may, the 

VoL. V—15 eee 


226 EDGAR ALLAN FOE 


rapidly growing ‘‘reputation”’ of our poet was much 
enhanced by the publication of his first compositions 
‘‘of length,” and attained its climax, we believe, 
upon the public recitation by himself, of a tragic 
drama, in five acts, entitled ‘‘Athenia of Damascus,”’. 
to a large assembly of admiring and applauding 
friends, gathered together for the occasion in one of 
the halls of the University of New-York. 

This popular decision, so frequent and so public, 
in regard to the poetical ability of Mr. Dawes, might 
be received as evidence of his actual merit (and by 
thousands it zs so received) were it not too scandal- 
ously at variance with a species of criticism which 
will not be resisted—with the perfectly simple pre- 
cepts of the very commonest common sense. The 
peculiarity of Mr. Griswold’s observation has in- 
duced us to make inquiry into the true character of 
the volume to which we have before alluded, and 
which embraces, we believe, the chief portion of the | 
published verse-compositions of its author.* This 
inquiry has but resulted in the confirmation of our 
previous opinion; and we now hesitate not to say, 
that no man in America has been more shamefully 
over-estimated than the one who forms the subject 
of this article. We say shamefully; for, though a 
better day is now dawning upon our literary interests, 
and a laudation so indiscriminate will never be 
sanctioned again—the laudation in this instance, as it 
stands upon record, must be regarded as a laughable 
although bitter satire upon the general zeal, accuracy 
and independence of that critical spirit which, but 
a few years ago, pervaded and degraded the land. 

In what we shall say we have no intention of being 


*‘*Geraldine,’”’ ‘‘Athenia of Damascus,” and Miscellaneous 
Poems. By Rufus Dawes. Published by Samuel Colman, 
New-York. 


RUFUS DAWES 227 


profound. Here is a case in which anything like 
analysis would be utterly thrown away. Our pur- 
pose (which is truth) will be more fully answered by 
an unvarnished exposition of fact. It appears to us, 
indeed, that in excessive generalization lies one of 
the leading errors of a criticism employed upon a 
poetical literature so immature as our own. We 
rhapsodize rather than discriminate; delighting 
more in the dictation or discussion of a principle, 
than in its particular and methodical application. 
The wildest and most erratic effusion of the Muse, 
not utterly worthless, will be found more or less in- 
debted to method for whatever of value it embodies; 
and we shall discover, conversely, that, in any 
analysis of even the wildest effusion, we labor with- 
out method only to labor without end. There is 
little reason for that vagueness of comment which, 
of late, we so pertinaciously affect, and which has 
been brought into fashion, no doubt, through the 
proverbial facility and security of merely general 
remark. In regard to the leading principles of true 
poesy, these, we think, stand not at all in need of the 
elucidation hourly wasted upon them. Founded in 
the unerring instincts of our nature, they are en- 
during and immutable. In a rigid scrutiny of any 
number of directly conflicting opinions upon a 
poetical topic, we will not fail to perceive that 
principles identical in every important point have 
been, in each opinion, either asserted, or intimated, 
or unwittingly allowed aninfluence. The differences 
of decision arose simply from those of application; 
and from such variety in the applied, rather than in 
the conceived idea, sprang, undoubtedly, the absurd 
distinctions of the ‘‘schools.”’ 

‘Geraldine’ is the title of the first and longest 
poem in the volume before us, It embraces some 


228 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


three hundred and fifty stanzas—the whole being a 
most servile imitation of the ‘‘Don Juan” of Lord 
Byron. The outrageous absurdity of the systematic 
digression in the British original, was so managed 
as to form not a little portion of its infinite interest 
and humor; and the fine discrimination of the writer 
pointed out to him a limit beyond which he never 
ventured with this tantalizing species of drollery. 
‘‘Geraldine’”’ may be regarded, however, as a simple 
embodiment of the whole soul of digression. Itisa 
mere mass of irrelevancy, amid the mad farrago of 
which we detect with difficulty even the faintest 
vestige of a narrative, and where the continuous 
lapse from impertinence to impertinence is seldom 
justified by any shadow of appositeness or even of 
the commonest relation. 

To afford the reader any proper conception of the 
story, is of course a matter of difficulty; we must 
content ourselves with a mere outline of the general 
conduct. This we shall endeavor to give without 
indulgence in those feelings of risibility stirred up in 
us by the primitive perusal. We shall rigorously 
avoid every species of exaggeration, and confine our- 
selves, with perfect honesty, to the conveyance of a 
distinct image. 

“‘Geraldine,” then, opens with some four or five 
stanzas descriptive of a sylvan scene in America. 
We could, perhaps, render Mr. Dawes’ poetical 
reputation no greater service than by the quotation 
of these simple verses in full. 


I know a spot where poets fain would dwell, 
To gather flowers and food for after thought, 
As bees draw honey from the rose’s cell, 
To hive among the treasures they have wrought; 
And there a cottage frem a sylvan screen 
Sent up a curling smoke amidst the green, 


RUFUS DAWES 226 


Around that hermit home of quietude 
The elm trees whispered with the summer air, 
And nothing ever ventured to intrude 
But happy birds that caroled wildly there, 
Or honey-laden harvesters that flew 
Humming away to drink the morning dew. 


Around the door the honey-suckle climbed 
And Multa-flora spread her countless roses, 
And never poet sang nor minstrel rhymed 
Romantic scene where happiness reposes, 
Sweeter to sense than that enchanting dell 
Where home-sick memory fondly loves to dwell. 


Beneath the mountain’s brow the cottage stood 
Hard by a shelving lake whose pebbled bed 
Was skirted by the drapery of a wood 
That hung its festoon foliage over head, 
Where wild deer came at eve unharmed, to drink, 
While moonlight threw their shadows from the brink. 


The green earth heaved her giant waves around, 
Where, through the mountain vista, one vast height 

Towered heavenward without peer, his forehead bound 
With gorgeous clouds, at times of changeful light, 

While, far below, the lake in bridal rest 

Slept with his glorious picture on her breast. 


Here is an air of quietude in good keeping with the 
theme; the “‘giant waves” in the last stanzas re- 
deem it from much exception otherwise; and per- 
haps we need say nothing at all of the suspicious- 
looking compound ‘‘multa-flora.’”’ Had Mr. Dawes 
always written even nearly so well, we should have 
been spared to-day the painful task imposed upon 
us by a stern sense of our critical duty. These pas- 
sages are followed immediately by an address or in- 
vocation to ‘‘Peerless America,” including apostro- 
phes to Allston and Claude Lorraine. 

We now learn the name of the tenant of the cot- 


230 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


tage, which is Wilton, and ascertain that he has an 
only daughter. A single stanza quoted at this 
juncture will aid the reader’s conception of the 
queer tone of philosophical rhapsody with which the 
poem teems, and some specimen of which is in- 
variably made to follow each little modicum of 
incident. | 


How like the heart is to an instrument 

A touch can wake to gladness or to wol 
How like the circumambient element 

The spirit with its undulating flow! 
The heart—the soul—Oh, Mother Nature, why 
This universal bond of sympathy. 


After two pages much in this manner, we are told 
that Geraldine is the name of the maiden, and are in- 
formed, with comparatively little circumlocution, of 
her character. She is beautiful, and kind-hearted, 
and somewhat romantic, and ‘“‘some thought her — 
reason touched”—for which we have little dis- 
position to blame them. There is now much about 
Kant and Fichte; about Schelling, Hegel and 
Cousin; (which latter is made to rhyme with gang;) 
about Milton, Byron, Homer, Spinoza, David 
Hume, and Mirabeau; and a good deal, too, about the 
scribendt cacoéthes, in which an evident misunder- 
standing of the quantity of cacoéthes brings, again, 
into very disagreeable suspicion the writer’s cogni- 
zance of the Latin tongue. At this point we may 
refer, also, to such absurdities as 


Truth with her thousand-folded robe of error 
Close shut in her sarcophagi of terror— 


And 
Where candelabri silver the white halls. 


RUFUS DAWES 331 


Now, no one is presupposed to be cognizant of any 
language beyond his own; to be ignorant of Latin is 
no crime; to pretend a knowledge is beneath con- 
tempt; and the pretender will attempt in vain to 
utter or to write two consecutive phrases of a 
foreign idiom, without betraying his deficiency to 
those who are conversant. 

At page 39, there is some prospect of a progress in 
the story. Here we are introduced to a Mr. Acus and 
his fair daughter, Miss Alice. 


Acus had been a dashing Bond-street tailor 

Some few short years before, who took his measures 
So carefully he always cut the jailor 

And filled his coffers with exhaustless treasures; 
Then with his wife, a son, and three fair daughters, 
He sunk the goose and straightway crossed the waters, 


His residence is in the immediate vicinity of Wilton. 
The daughter, Miss Alice, who is said to be quite a 
belle, is enamored of one Waldron, a foreigner, a 
lion, and a gentleman of questionable reputation. 
His character (which for our life and soul we cannot 
comprehend) is given within the space of some 
forty or fifty stanzas, made to include, at the same 
time, an essay on motives, deduced from the text 
“whatever is must be,” and illuminated by a long 
note at the end of the poem, wherein the systeme 
(quere systéme?) de la Nature is sturdily attacked. 
Let us speak the truth: this note (and the whole 
of them, for there are many,) may be regarded as a 
glorious specimen of the concentrated essence of 
rigmarole, and, to say nothing of their utter ab- 
surdity per se, are so ludicrously uncalled for, and 
grotesquely out of place, that we found it impossible 
to refrain, during their perusal, from a most un- 
becoming and uproarious guffaw. We will be par- 


232 EDGAR ALLAN POR 


doned for giving a specimen—selecting it for its 
brevity. 
Reason, he deemed, could measure everything, 
And reason told him that there was a law 
Of mental action which must ever fling 
A death-bolt at all faith, and this he saw 
Was Transference. (14) 


Turning to Note 14, we read thus— 

‘If any one has a curiosity to look into this sub- 
ject, (does Mr. Dawes really think any one so great 
a fool?) and wishes to see how far the force of reason- 
ing and analysis may carry him, independently of 
revelation, I would suggest (thank you, sir,) such 
inquiries as the following: 

‘‘Whether the first Philosophy, considered in 
relation to Physics, was first in time? 

‘‘How far our moral perceptions have been in- 
fluenced by natural phenomena? 

‘‘How far our metaphysical notions of cause and | 
effect are attributable to the transference of notions 
connected with logical language?” 

And all this in a poem about Acus, a tailor! 

Waldron prefers, unhappily, Geraldine to Alice, 
and Geraldine returns his love, exciting thus the 
deep indignation of the neglected fair one, 


whom love and jealousy bear up 
To mingle poison in her rival’s cup. 


Miss A. has among her adorers one of the genus 
loafer, whose appellation, not improperly, is Bore. 
B. is acquainted with a milliner—the milliner of the 
disconsolate lady. 


She made this milliner her friend, who swore 
To work her full revenge through Mr. Bore. 


And now says the poet— 


RUFUS DAWES 233 


I leave your sympathetic fancies, 
To fill the outline of this pencil sketch, 


This filling has been, with us at least, a matter of 
no little difficulty. We believe, however, that the 
affair is intended to run thus:—Waldron is enticed 
to some vile sins by Bore, and the knowledge of 
these, on the part of Alice, places the former gentle- 
man in her power. 

We are now introduced to a féte champétre at the 
residence of Acus, who, by the way, has a son, 
Clifford, a suitor to Geraldine with the approbation 
of her father—that good old gentleman, for whom 
our sympathies were excited in the beginning of 
things, being influenced by the consideration that 
this scion of the house of the tailor will inherit a 
plum. The worst of the whole is, however, that the 
romatic Geraldine, who should have known better, 
and who loves Waldron, loves also the young knight 
of the shears. The consequence is a rencontre of 
the rival suitors at the féte champétre; Waldron 
knocking his antagonist on the head, and throwing 
him into the lake. The murderer, as well as we can 
make out the narrative, now joins a piratical band, 
among whom he alternately cuts throats and sings 
songs of his own composition. In the mean time 
the deserted Geraldine mourns alone, till, wpon a 
certain day, 


A shape stood by her like a thing of air— 
She started—Waldron’s haggard face was there, 
He laid her gently down, of sense bereft, 
And sunk her picture on her bosom’s snow, 
And close beside these lines in blood he left: 
“Farewell forever, Geraldine, I go 
Another woman’s victim—dare I tell? 
?Tis Alice!——curse us, Geraldine!—farewell!”! 


234 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


There is no possibility of denying the fact: this zs a 
droll piece of business. The lover brings forth a 
miniature, (Mr. Dawes has a passion for miniatures,) 
sinks it in the bosom of the lady, cuts his finger, and 
writes with the blood an epistle, (where is not speci- 
fied, but we, presume he indites it upon the bosom 
as it is ‘‘close beside” the picture,) in which epistle 
he announces that he is ‘another woman’s victim,” 
giving us to understand that he himself is a woman 
after all, and concluding with the delicious bit of 
Billingsgate 


dare I tell? 
*Tis Alicel!—curse us, Geraldine!—farewell! 


We suppose, however, that ‘‘curse us” is a misprint; 
for why should Geraldine curse both herself and her 
lover?—it should have been “‘curse it!’ no doubt. 
The whole passage, perhaps, would have read better | 
thus— 
oh, my eye! 
Tis Alicel—d—n it, Geraldine!—good bye! 


The remainder of the narrative may be briefly 
summed up. Waldron returns to his professional 
engagements with the pirates, while Geraldine, at- 
tended by her father, goes to sea for the benefit of her 
health. The consequence is inevitable. The vessels 
of the separated lovers meet and engage in the most 
diabolical of conflicts. Both are all blown to pieces. 
In a boat from one vessel, Waldron escapes—in a 
boat from the other, the lady Geraldine. Now, as 
a second natural consequence, the parties meet 
again—Destiny is every thing in such cases. Well, 
the parties meet again. The lady Geraldine has 
“that miniature’? about her neck, and the circum- 
stance proves too much for the excited state of 


RUFUS DAWES 235 


mind of Mr. Waldron. He just seizes her ladyship, 
therefore, by the small of the waist and incontinently 
leaps with her into the sea. 

However intolerably absurd this skeleton of the 
story may appear, a thorough perusal will convince 
the reader that the entire fabric is even more so. It 
is impossible to convey, in any such digest as we 
have given, a full idea of the nzaiseries with which 
the narrative abounds. An utter want of keeping is 
especially manifest throughout. In the most sol- 
emnly serious passages we have, for example, inci- 
dents of the world of 1839, jumbled up with the 
distorted mythology of the Greeks. Our conclusion 
of the drama, as we just gave it, was perhaps ludic- 
rous enough; but how much more preposterous does it 
appear in the grave language of the poet himself! 


And round her neck the miniature was hung 
Of him who gazed with Hell’s unmingled wo; 
He saw her, kissed her cheek, and wildly flung 
His arms around her with a mad’ning throw— 
Then plunged within the cold unfathomed deep 
While sirens sang their victim to his sleep! 


Only think of a group of sirens singing to sleep a 
modern ‘‘miniatured” flirt, kicking about in the 
water with a New York dandy in tight pantaloons! 
But not even these stupidities would suffice to 
justify a total condemnation of the poetry of Mr. 
Dawes. We have known follies very similar com- 
mitted by men of real ability, and have been in- 
duced to disregard them in earnest admiration of the 
brilliancy of the minor beauty of style. Simplicity, 
perspicuity and vigor, or a well-disciplined ornate- 
ness of language, have done wonders for the reputa- 
tion of many a writer really deficient in the higher 
and more essential qualities of the Muse. But 


236 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


upon these minor points of manner our poet has not 
even the shadow of a shadow to sustain him. His 
works, in this respect, may be regarded as a theatrical 
world of mere verbiage, somewhat speciously bediz- 
zened with a tinselly meaning well adapted to the 
eyes of the rabble. There is not a page of anything 
that he has written which will bear, for an instant, 
the scrutiny of a critical eye. Exceedingly fond 
of the glitter of metaphor, he has not the capacity to 
manage it, and, in the awkward attempt, jumbles to- 
gether the most incongruous of ornament. Let us 
take any passage of ‘‘Geraldine” by way of exempli- 
fication. 





Thy rivers swell the sea— 
In one eternal diapason pour 
Thy cataracts the hymn of liberty, 

Teaching the clouds to thunder. 


Here we have cataracts teaching clouds to thunder— 
and how? By means of a hymn. 


Why should chromatic discord charm the ear 
And smiles and tears stream o’er with troubled joy? 


Tears may stream over, but not smiles. 


Then comes the breathing time of young Romance, 
The June of life, when summer’s earliest ray 

Warms the red arteries, that bound and dance 
With soft voluptuous impulses at play, 

While the full heart sends forth as from a hive 
A thousand winged messengers alive. 


Let us reduce this to a simple statement, and we 
have—what? ‘The earliest ray of summer warming 
red arteries, which are bounding and dancing, and 
playing with a parcel of urchins, called voluptuous 
impulses, while the bee-hive of a heart attached to 


RUFUS DAWES 237 


these dancing arteries is at the same time sending 
forth a swarm of its innocent little inhabitants. 


The eyes were like the sapphire of deep air, 
The garb that distance robes elysium in, 
But oh, so much of heaven lingered there 
The wayward heart forgot its blissful sin 
And worshipped all Religion well forbids 
Beneath the silken fringes of their lids. 


That distance is not the cause of the sapphire of 
the sky, is not to our present purpose. We wish 
merely to call attention to the verbiage of the 
stanza. It is impossible to put the latter portion of 
it into anything like intelligible prose. So much of 
heaven lingered in the lady’s eyes that the wayward 
heart forgot its blissful sin, and worshiped every- 
thing which religion forbids, beneath the silken 
fringes of the lady’s eyelids. This we cannot be 
compelled to understand, and shall therefore say 
nothing further about it. 


She loved to lend Imagination wing 

And link her heart with Juliet’s in a dream, 
And feel the music of a sister string 

That thrilled the current of her vital stream, 


How delightful a picture we have here! A lady is 
lending one of her wings to the spirit, or genius, 
called Imagination, who, of course, has lost one of 
his own. While thus employed with one hand, with 
the other she is chaining her heart to the heart of the 
fair Juliet. At the same time she is feeling the 
music of a sister string, and this string is thrilling the 
current of the lady’s vital stream. If this is down- 
right nonsense we cannot be held responsible for its 
perpetration; it is but the downright nonsense of 
Mr. Dawes. 


238 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Again— 
Without the Palinurus of self-science 
Byron embarked upon the stormy sea, 
To adverse breezes hurling his defiance 
And dashing up the rainbows on his lee, 
And chasing those he made in wildest mirth, 
Or sending back their images to earth. 


This stanza we have more than once seen quoted as 
a fine specimen of the poetical powers of our author. 
His lordship, no doubt, is herein r-ade to cut a very 
remarkable figure. Let us imagine him, for one 
moment, embarked upon a stormy sea, hurling his 
defiance, (literally throwing his gauntlet or glove,) 
to the adverse breezes, dashing up rain bows on his 
lee, laughing at them, and chasing them at the same 
time, and, in conclusion, ‘“‘sending back their 
images to earth.’’ But we have already wearied the 
reader with this abominable rigmarole. We shall 
be pardoned, (after the many specimens thus given 
at random), for not carrying out the design we 
originally intended: that of commenting upon two 
or three successive pages of ‘‘Geraldine,’’ with a view 
of showing, (in a spirit apparently more fair than 
that of particular selection,) the entireness with 
which the whole poem is pervaded by unintelligi- 
bility. To every thinking mind, however, this would 
seem a work of supererogation. In such matters, 
by such understandings, the brick of the skolastikos 
will be received implicitly as a sample of the house. 
The writer capable, to any extent, of such absurdity 
as we have pointed out, cannot, by any possibility, 
produce a long article worth reading. We say this 
in the very teeth of the magnificent assembly which 
listened to the recital of Mr. Dawes, in the great hall 
of the University of. New York. We shall leave 
‘‘Athenia of Damascus,” without comment, to the 


RUFUS DAWES 239 


decision of those who may find time and temper for 
its perusal, and conclude our extracts by a quotation, 
from among the minor poems, of the following very 
respectable 


ANACREONTIC 


Fill again the mantling bowl 
Nor fear to meet the morning breaking] 
None but slaves should bend the soul 
Beneath the chains of mortal making: 
Fill your beakers to the brim, 
Bacchus soon shall lull your sorrow; 
Let delight 
But crown the night, 
And care may bring her clouds to-morrow. 


Mark this cup of rosy wine 
With virgin pureness deeply blushing; 
Beauty pressed it from the vine 
While Love stood by to charm its gushing; 
He who dares to drain it now 
Shall drink such bliss as seldom gladdens; 
The Moslem’s dream 
Would joyless seem 
To him whose brain its rapture maddens, 


Pleasure sparkles on the brim— 
Lethe lies far deeper in it— 
Both, enticing, wait for him 
Whose heart is warm enough to win it; 
Hearts like ours, if e’er they chill 
Soon with love again must lighten. 
Skies may wear 
A darksome air 
Where sunshine most is known to brighten, 


Then fill, fill high the mantling bowl! 

Nor fear to meet the morning breaking; 
Care shall never cloud the soul 

While Beauty’s beaming eyes are waking. 


240 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Fill your beakers to the brim, 
Bacchus soon shall lull your sorrow; 
Let delight 
But crown the night, 
And care may bring her clouds to-morrow. 


Whatever shall be, hereafter, the position of Mr. 
Dawes in the poetical world, he will be indebted for 
it altogether to his shorter compositions, some of 
which have the merit of tenderness; others of 
melody and force. What seems to be the popular 
opinion in respect to his more voluminous effusions, 
has been brought about, in some measure, by a 
certain general zact, nearly amounting to taste, and 
more nearly the converse of talent. This tact has 
been especially displayed in the choice of not in- 
elegant titles and other externals; in a peculiar 
imitative speciousness of manner, pervading the 
surface of his writings; and, (here we have the 
anomaly of a positive benefit deduced from a radical 
defect,) in an absolute deficiency in basis, in stamen, 
in matter, or pungency, which, if even slightly 
evinced, might have invited the reader to an inti- 
mate and understanding perusal, whose result would 
have been disgust. His poems have not been con- 
demned, only because they have never been read. 
The glitter upon the surface has sufficed, with the 
newspaper critic, to justify his hyperboles of praise. 

Very few persons, we feel assured, have had 
sufficient nerve to wade through the entire volume 
now in question, except, as in our own case, with the 
single object of criticism in view. Mr. Dawes has, 
also, been aided to a poetical reputation by the 
amiability of his character asaman. How efficient 
such causes have before been in producing such 
effects, is a point but too thoroughly understood. 

We have already spoken of the numerous friends 


RUFUS DAWES | 241 


of the poet; and we shall not here insist upon the 
fact, that we bear him no personal ill-will. With 
those who know us, such a declaration would ap- 
pear supererogatory; and by those who know us not, 
it would, doubtless, be received with incredulity. 
_ What we have said, however, is not in opposition to 
Mr. Dawes, nor even so much in opposition to the 
poems of Mr. Dawes, as in defence of the many true 
souls which, in Mr. Dawes’ apotheosis are aggrieved. 
The laudation of the unworthy is to the worthy the 
most bitter of all wrong. But it is unbecoming in 
him who merely demonstrates a truth, to offer reason 
or apology for the demonstration. 


VoL. V—x6 


242 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


FLACCUS—THOMAS WARD 


T= poet now comprehended in the cognomen 
Flaccus, is by no means our ancient friend 
Quintus Horatius, nor even his ghost, but 
merely a Mr. Ward, of Gotham, once a contribu- 
tor to the New York ‘‘American,’’ and to the New 
York ‘‘ Knickerbocker”? Magazine. He is character- 
ized by Mr. Griswold, in his ‘‘Poets and Poetryof 
America,’”’ as a gentleman of elegant leisure. 

What there is in ‘‘elegant leisure” so much at war 
with the divine afflatus, it is not very difficult, but 
quite unnecessary, to say. The fact has been long 
apparent. Never sing the Nine so well as when 
penniless. The mens divinior is one thing, and the - 
otium cum dignitate quite another. 

Of course Mr. Ward is not, as a poet, altogether 
destitute of merit. Ifso, the public had been spared 
these paragraphs. But the sum of his deserts has 
been footed up by a clique who are in the habit of 
reckoning units as tens in all cases where champagne 
and “‘elegant leisure’? are concerned. We do not 
consider him, at all points, a Pop Emmons, but, with 
deference to the more matured opinions of the 
“‘Knickerbocker,” we may be permitted to entertain 
a doubt whether he is either Jupiter Tonans, or 
Phoebus Apollo. 

Justice is not, at all times, to all persons, the most 
desirable thing in the world, but then there is the old 
adage about the tumbling of the heavens, and simple 
justice is all that we propose in the case of Mr. Ward. 
We have no design to be bitter. We notice his book 





FLACCUS—THOMAS WARD 243 


at all, only because it is an unusually large one of 
its kind, because it is here lying upon our table, and 
because, whether justly or unjustly, whether for 
good reason or for none, it has attracted some por- 
tion of the attention of the public. 

The volume is entitled, somewhat affectedly, 
‘Passaic, a Group of Poems touching that river: 
with Other Musings, by Flaccus,’’ and embodies, 
we believe, all the previously published effusions of 
its author. It commences with a very pretty 
“Sonnet to Passaic,” and from the second poem, 
‘Introductory Musings on Rivers,’’ we aré happy in 
being able to quote an entire page of even remarkable 
beauty. 


Beautiful Rivers! that adown the vale 

With graceful passage journey to the deep, 

Let me along your grassy marge recline 

At ease, and, musing, meditate the strange 
Bright history of your life; yes, from your birth 
Has beauty’s shadow chased your every step: 
The blue sea was your mother, and the sun 

Your glorious sire, clouds your voluptuous cradle, 
Roofed with o’erarching rainbows; and your fall 
To earth was cheered with shouts of happy birds, 
With brightened faces of reviving flowers, 

And meadows, while the sympathizing west 

Took holiday, and donn’d her richest robes. 
From deep mysterious wanderings your springs 
Break bubbling into beauty; where they lie 

In infant helplessness awhile, but soon 

Gathering in tiny brooks, they gambol down 

The steep sides of the mountain, laughing, shouting, 
Teasing the wild flowers, and at every turn 
Meeting new playmates still to swell their ranks; 
Which, with the rich increase resistless grown, 
Shed foam and thunder, that the echoing wood 
Rings with the boisterous glee; while, o’er their head 
Catching their spirit blithe, young rainbows sport, 
The frolic children of the wanton sun, 


244 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Nor is your swelling prime, or green old age, 
Though calm, unlovely; still, where’er ye move, 
Your train is beauty; trees stand grouping by, 

To mark your graceful progress; giddy flowers 
And vain, as beauties wont, stoop o’er the verge 
To greet their faces in your flattering glass; 

The thirsty herd are following at your side; 

And water-birds in clustering fleets convoy 

Your sea-bound tides; and jaded man, released 
From worldly thralldom, here his dwelling plants— 
Here pauses in your pleasant neighborhood, 

Sure of repose along your tranquil shores; 

And, when your end approaches, and ye blend 
With the eternal ocean, ye shall fade 

As placidly as when an infant dies, 

And the Death-Angel shall your powers withdraw 
Gently as twilight takes the parting day, 

And, with a soft and gradual decline 

That cheats the senses, lets it down to night. 


There is nothing very original in all this; the 
general idea is perhaps the most absolutely trite in » 
poetical literature; but the theme is not the less just 
on this account, while we must confess that it is ad- 
mirably handled. The picture embodied in the 
whole of the concluding paragraph is perfect. The 
seven final lines convey not only a novel but a highly 
appropriate and beautiful image. 

What follows, of this poem, however, is by no 
means worthy so fine a beginning. Instead of con- 
fining himself to the true poetical thesis, the Beauty 
or the Sublimity of river scenery, he descends into 
mere meteorology—into the uses and general phi- 
losophy of rain, &c.—matters which should be left 
to Mr. Espy, who knows something about thern, as 
we are sorry to say Mr. Flaccus does not. 

The second and chief poem in the volume, is en- 
titled ‘‘The Great Descender.” We emphasize the 
““poem”’ merely by way of suggesting that the 


FLACCUS—THOMAS WARD 245 


*‘Great Descender” is anything else. We never 
could understand what pleasure men of talent can 
take in concocting elaborate doggerel of this order. 
Least of all can we comprehend why, having per- 
petrated the atrocity, they should place it at the 
door of the Muse. We are at a loss to know by 
what right, human or divine, twattle of this character 
is intruded into a collection of what professes to be 
Poetry. We put it to Mr. Ward, in all earnestness, 
if the ‘‘Great Descender,’’ which is a history of Sam 
Patch, has a single attribute, beyond that of mere 
versification, in common with what even Sam Patch 
himself would have had the hardihood to denominate 
@ poem. 

Let us call this thing a rhymed jeu d’esprit, a 
burlesque, or what not?—and even so called and 
judged by its new name, we must still regard it as a 
failure. Even in the loosest compositions we de- 
mand a certain degree of keeping. But in the 
‘‘Great Descender’’ none is apparent. The tone is 
unsteady—fluctuating between the grave and the 
gay—and never being precisely either. Thus there 
is a failure in both. The intention being never 
rightly taken, we are of course never exactly in con- 
dition either to weep or to laugh. 

We do not pretend to be the Oracles of Dodona, 
but it does really appear to us that Mr. Flaccus in- 
tended the whole matter, in the first instance, as a 
solemnly serious thing; and that, having composed 
it in a grave vein, he became apprehensive of its ex- 
citing derision and so interwove sundry touches of 
the burlesque, behind whose equivocal aspect, he 
might shelter himself at need. In no other sup- 
position can we reconcile the spoity appearance of 
the whole with a belief in the sanity of the author. 
It is difficult also in any other view of the case, to 


246 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


appreciate the air of positive gravity with which he 
descants upon the advantages to Science which have 
accrued from a man’s making a frog of himself. Mr. 
Ward is frequently pleased to denominate Mr. 
Patch ‘‘a martyr of science,’’ and appears very dog- 
gedly in earnest in all passages such as the following: 


Through the glad Heavens, which tempests now conceal, 
Deep thunder-guns in quick succession peal, 

As if salutes were firing from the sky, 

To hail the triumph and the victory. 

Shout! trump of Fame, till thy brass lungs burst out! 
Shout! mortal tongues! deep-throated thunders, shout! 
For lo! electric genius, downward hurled, 

Has startled Sczence, and illumed the world! 


That Mr. Patch was a gentus we do not doubt; 
so is Mr. Ward; but the science displayed in jumping 
down the Falls, is a point above us. There might 
have been some science in jumping up. 

‘“‘The Worth of Beauty; or a Lover’s Journal,”’ is 
the title of the poem next in place and importance. 
Of this composition Mr. W. thus speaks in a Note: 
‘The individual to whom the present poem relates, 
and who had suffered severely all the pains and 
penalties which arise from the want of those personal 
charms so much admired by him in others, gave the 
author, many years since, some fragments of a 
journal kept in his early days, in which he had 
bared his heart, and set down all his thoughts and 
feelings. ‘This prose journal has here been trans- 
planted into the richer soil of verse.’ 

The narrative of the friend of Mr. Flaccus must, 
originally, have been a very good thing. By 
“‘originally,’’ we mean before it had the misfortune 
to be “‘transplanted in the richer soil of verse’— 
which has by no means agreed with its constitution. 
But, even through the dense fog of our author’s 


FLACCUS—THOMAS WARD 2447 


rhythm, we can get an occasional glimpse of its 
merit. It must have been the work of a heart on 
fire with passion, and the utter abandon of the 
details, reminds us even of Jean Jacques. But alas 
for this “‘richer soil!’ Can we venture to present 
our readers with a specimen? 


Now roses blush, and violets’ eyes, 
And seas reflect the glance of skies; 
And now that frolic pencil streaks 

With quaintest tints the tulips’ cheeks; 
Now jewels bloom in secret worth, 
Like blossoms of the inner earth; 

Now painted birds are pouring round 
The beauty and the wealth of sound; 
Now sea-shells glance with quivering ray, 
Too rare to seize, too fleet to stay, 
And hues out-dazzling all the rest 

Are dashed profusely on the west, 
While rainbows seem to palettes changed, 
Whereon the motley tints are ranged. 
But soft the moon that pencil tipped, 
As though, in liquid radiance dipped, 
A likeness of the sun it drew, 

But flattered him with pearlier hue; 
Which haply spilling runs astray, 

And blots with light the milky way; 
While stars besprinkle all the air, 

Like spatterings of that pencil there. 


All this by way of exalting the subject. The moon 
is made a painter, and the rainbow a palette. And 
the moon has a pencil (that pencil!) which she dips, 
by way of a brush, in the liquid radiance (the colors 
on a palette are not liquid,) and then draws (not 
paints) a likeness of the sun; but, in the attempt, 
plasters him too ‘‘pearly,” puts it on too thick; the 
consequence of which is that some of the paint is 
spilt, and ‘‘runs astray”” and besmears the milky 
way, and ‘‘spatters” the rest of the sky with stars! 


248 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


We can only say that a very singular picture was 
spoilt in the making. 

The versification of the ‘‘Worth of Beauty”’ pro- 
ceeds much after this fashion; we select a fair 
example of the whole from page 43. 


Yes! pangs have cut my soul with grief 

So keen that gashes were relief, 

And racks have rung my spirit-frame 

To which the strain of joints were tame 
And battle strife itself were nought 

Beside the inner fight I’ve fought. etc., etc. 


Nor do we regard any portion of it (so far as 
rhythm is concerned) as at all comparable to some 
of the better ditties of William Slater. Here, for 
example, from his Psalms, published in 1642: 


The righteous shall his sorrow scan 
And laugh at him, and say “ behold 

What hath become of this here man 
That on his riches was so bold.”’ 


And here, again, are lines from the edition of the 
same Psalms, by Archbishop Parker, which we most 
decidedly prefer: 


Who sticketh to God in sable trust 

As Sion’s mount he stands full just, 
Which moveth no whit nor yet can reel, 
But standeth forever as stiff as steel. 


‘The Martyr” and the ‘‘ Retreat of Seventy-Six” 
are merely Revoluntionary incidents ‘‘done into 
verse,” and spoilt in the doing. ‘‘The Retreat” 
begins with the remarkable line. 


Tramp! tramp! tramp! tramp! 


which is elsewhere introduced into the poem. We 


FLACCUS—THOMAS WARD 249 


look in vain, here, for anything worth even qualified 
commendation. 

‘‘The Diary”’ is a record of events occurring to the 
author during a voyage from New York to Havre. 
Of these events a fit of sea-sickness is the chief. 
Mr. Ward, we believe, is the first of the genus tr- 
ritable who has ventured to treat so delicate a sub- 
ject with that grave dignity which is its due: 


Rejoice! rejoice! already on my sight 
Bright shores, gray towers, and coming wonders reel; 
My brain grows giddy—is it with delight? — 
A swimming faintness, such as one might feel 
When stabbed and dying, gathers on my sense— 
It weighs me down—and now—help!—horror!— 


But the ‘‘horror,”’ and indeed all that ensues, we 
must leave to the fancy of the poetical. 

Some pieces entitled ‘‘Humorous” next succeed, 
and one or two of them (for example, ‘‘The Graham 
System”’ and ‘‘The Bachelor’s Lament’’) are not so 
very contemptible in their way, but the way itself is 
beneath even contempt. 

‘*To an Infant in Heaven” embodies some striking 
thoughts, and, although feeble as a whole, and 
terminating lamely, may be cited as the best com- 
position in the volume. We quote two or three of 
the opening stanzas: 


Thou bright and star-like spirit! 
That in my visions wild 

I see ’mid heaven’s seraphic host— 
Oh! canst thou be my child? 


My grief is quenched in wonder, 
And pride arrests my sighs; 

A branch from this unworthy stock 
Now blossoms in the skies. 


250 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Our hopes of thee were lofty, 
But have we cause to grieve? 

Oh! could our fondest, proudest wish 
A nobler fate conceive? 


. The little weeper tearless! 
The sinner snatched from sin! 
The babe to more than manhood grown, 
Ere childhood did begin! 


And I, thy earthly teacher, 
Would blush thy powers to see 

Thou art to me a parent now, 
And I a child to thee! 


There are several other pieces in the book—but it 
is needless to speak of them in detail. Among them 
we note one or two political effusions, and one or two 
which are (satirically’?) termed satirical. All are 
worthless. 

Mr. Ward’s imagery, at detached points, has oc- 
casional vigor and appropriateness; we may go so far 
as to say that, at times, it is strikingly beautiful—by 
accident of course. Let us cite afew instances, At 
page 53 we read— 


O! happy day!—earth, sky is fair, 
And fragrance floats along the air; 
For all the bloomy orchards glow 
As with a fall of rosy snow. 


At page 91— 


How flashed the overloaded flowers 
With gems, a present from the showers 


At page g2— 


No! there is danger; all the night 

I saw her like a starry light 

More lovely in my visions lone 

Than in my day-dreams truth she shone. 


FLACCUS—THOMAS WARD 251 


*Tis naught when on the sun we gaze 
If only dazzled by his rays, 

But when our eyes his form retain 
Some wound to vision must remain, 


And again, at page 234, speaking of a slight shock 
of an earthquake, the earth is said to tremble 


As if some wing of passing angel, bound 
From sphere to sphere, had brushed the golden chain . 
That hangs our planet to the throne of God. 


This latter passage, however, is, perhaps, not al- 
together original with Mr. Ward. In a poem now 
lying before us, entitled ‘‘Al Aaraaf,” the composi- 
tion of a gentleman of Philadelphia, we find what 
follows: 


A dome by link’d light from heaven let down 

Sat gently on these columns as a crown; 

A window of one circular diamond there 

Looked out above into the purple air, ! 
And rays from God shot down that meteor chain 
And hallow’d all the beauty twice again, 

Save when, between th’ Empyrean and that ring, 
Some eager spirit flapped his dusky wing. 


But if Mr. Ward’s imagery is, indeed, at rare in- 
tervals, good, it must be granted, on the other hand, 
that, in general, it is atrociously inappropriate, or 
low. For example: 


Thou gaping chasm! whose wide devouring throat 
Swallows a river, while the gulping note 

Of monstrous deglutition gurgles loud, etc. Page 24. 
Bright Beauty! child of starry birth, 

The grace, the gem, the flower of earth 

The damask livery of Heaven! Page 44. 


Here the mind wavers between gems, and stars, 
and taffety—between footmen and flowers. Again, 
at page 46— 


252 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


All thornless flowers of wit, all chaste 
And delicate essays of taste, 

All playful fancies, winged wiles, 

That from their pinions scatter smiles, 
All prompt resource in stress or pain, 
Leap ready-armed from woman's brain, 


The idea of ‘‘thornless flowers,’’ etc., leaping 
‘‘ready-armed’’ could have entered few brains ex- 
cept those of Mr. Ward. 

Of the most ineffable bad taste we have instances 
without number. For example—page 183— 


And, straining, fastens on her lips a kiss 
That seemed to suck the life-blood from her heartt 


And here, very gravely, at page 25— 


Again he’s rous’d, first cramming in hts cheek 
The weed, though vile, that props the nerves when weak. 


Here again, at page 33— 


Full well he knew where food does not refresh, 
The shrivel’d soul sinks inward with the flesh— 
That he’s best armed for danger’s rash career, 
Who's crammed so full there 1s no room for fear. 


But we doubt if the whole world of literature, 
poetical or prosaic, can afford a picture more utterly 
disgusting than the following, which we quote from 
page 177: 


But most of all good eating cheers the brain, 
Where other joys are rarely met—at sea— 

Unless, indeed, we lose as soon as gain— 
Ay, there’s the rub, so baffling oft to me. 

Boiled, roast, and baked—what precious choice of dishes 
My generous throat has shared among the fishes! 


FLACCUS—THOMAS WARD 253 


*Tis sweet to leave, in each forsaken spot, 

Our foot-prints there—if only in the sand; 
*Tis sweet to feel we are not all forgot, 

That some will weep our flight from every land; 
And sweet the knowledge, when the seas I cross, 

My briny messmates! ye will mourn my loss. 


This passage alone should damn the book—ay, 
damn a dozen such. 

Of what may be termed the niaiseries—the silli- 
nesses—of the volume, there is no end. Under this 
head we might quote two thirds of the work. For 
example: 


Now lightning, with convulsive spasm 
Splits heaven in many a fearful chasm.... 


It takes the high trees by the hair 

And, as with besoms, sweeps the air...... 
Now breaks the gloom and through the chinks 
The moon, in search of opening, winks— 


All seriously urged, at different points of page 66. 
Again, on the very next page— 


Bees buzzed and wrens that throng’d the rushes 
Poured round incessant twittering gushes. 


And here, at page 129— 


And now he leads her to the slippery brink 
Where ponderous tides headlong plunge down 
the horrid chink. 


And here, page 1o9g— 


And, like a ravenous vulture, peck 
The smoothness of that cheek and neck. 


And here, page 111— 
While through the skin worms wriggling broke, 


254 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


And here, page 170— | 
And ride the skittish backs of untamed waves, 


And here, page 214— 


Now clasps its mate in holy prayer 
Or twangs a harp of gold. 


Mr. Ward, also, is constantly talking about 
‘‘thunder-guns,”’ ‘‘thunder-trumpets,’’ and ‘‘thunder- 
shrieks.” He has a bad habit, too, of styling an eye 
‘ta weeper,”’ as for example, at page 208— 


Oh, curl in smiles that mouth again 
And wipe that weeper dry. 


Somewhere else he calls two tears ‘‘two sparklers” 
—very much in the style of Mr. Richard Swiveller, 
who was fond of denominating Madeira ‘‘the rosy.” 
‘In the nick,’’ meaning in the height, or fulness, is 
likewise a pet expression of the author of ‘The 
Great Descender.” Speaking of American forests 
at page 286, for instance, he says, ‘‘let the doubter 
walk through them in the nick of their glory.” A 
phrase which may be considered as in the very nick 
of good taste. 

We cannot pause to comment upon Mr. Ward’s 
most extraordinary system of versification. Js it 
his own? He has quite an original way of conglom- 
erating consonants, and seems to have been experi- 
menting whether it were not possible to do alto- 
gether without vowels. Sometimes he _ strings 
together quite a chain of impossibilities. The line, 
for example, at page 51, 


Or, only such as sea-shells flash, 


puts us much in mind of the schoolboy stumbling- 
block, beginning, ‘‘The cat ran up the ladder with a 
lump of raw liver in her mouth,’”’ and -we defy Sam 


FLACCUS—THOMAS WARD 255 


Patch himself to pronounce it twice in succession 
without tumbling into a blunder. 

But we are fairly wearied with this absurd theme. 
Who calls Mr. Ward a poet? He isa second-rate, or 
a third-rate, or perhaps a ninety-ninth-rate poet- 
aster. He is a gentleman of ‘‘elegant leisure,” 
and gentlemen of elegant leisure are, for the most 
part, neither men, women, nor Harriet Martineaus. 
Similar opinions, we believe, were expressed by 
somebody else—was it Mr. Benjamin ?—no very long 
while ago. Butneither Mr. Ward nor ‘‘The Knicker- 
bocker” would be convinced. ‘The latter, by way 
of defence, went into a treatise upon Sam Patch, and 
Mr. Ward, “‘in the nick of his glory,” wrote another 
poem against criticism in general, in which he called 
Mr. Benjamin ‘‘a wasp” and ‘‘an owl,’ and en- 
deavored to prove him an ass. An owl is a wise 
bird—especially in spectacles—still, we do not look 
upon Mr. Benjamin as an owl. If all are owls who 
disbelieve in this book, (which we now throw to the 
pigs) then the world at large cuts a pretty figure, 
indeed, and should be burnt up in April, as Mr. 
Miller desires—for it is only one immense aviary of 
owls. 


256 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


WILLIAM W. LORD* 


believe that he is astudent at Princeton Col- 

lege—or perhaps a graduate, or perhaps a 
Professor of thatinstitution. Of his book, lately, we 
have heard a good deal—that is to say, we have 
heard it announced in every possible variation of 
phrase, as ‘‘forthcoming.’”’ Forseveral months past, 
indeed, much amusement has been occasioned in the 
various literary coteries in New York, by the perti- 
nacity and obviousness of an attempt made by the 
poet’s friends to get up an anticipatory excitement in 
his favor. There were multitudinous dark rumors of 
something 7m posse—whispered insinuations that the | 
sun had at length arisen or would certainly arise— 
that a book was really in press which would revolu- 
tionize the poetical world—that the MS. had been 
submitted to the inspection of a junto of critics, 
whose fiat was well understood to be Fate, (Mr. 
Charles King, if we remember aright, forming one 
of the junto)—that the work had by them been ap- 
proved, and its successful reception and illimitable 
glorification assured.—Mr. Longfellow, in conse- 
quence, countermanding an order given his publish- 
ers (Redding & Co.,) to issue forthwith a new three 
penny edition of ‘‘The Voices of the Night.” Sug- 
gestions of this nature, busily circulated in private, 
were, in good time, insinuated through the press, 
until at length the public expectation was as much 
on tiptoe as public expectation, in America, can ever 
*Pogms. By William W. Lord. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 


() MR. LORD we know nothing—although we 


WILLIAM W. LORD 257 


be expected to be about so small a matter as the 
issue of a volume of American poems. The climax 
of this whole effort, however, at forestalling the 
critical opinion, and by far the most injudicious 
portion of the procedure, was the publisher’s an- 
nouncement of the forthcoming book as ‘“‘a very 
remarkable volume of poems.”’ 

The fact is, the only remarkable things about Mr. 
Lord’s compositions, are their remarkable conceit, 
ignorance, impudence, platitude, stupidity and 
bombast :—we are sorry to say all this, but there is 
an old adage about the falling of the Heavens. Nor 
must we be misunderstood. We intend to wrong 
neither Mr. Lord nor our own conscience, by denying 
him particular merits—such as they are. His book 
is not altogether contemptible—although the con- 
duct of his friends has innoculated nine-tenths of 
the community with the opinion that it is—but 
what we wish to sa~ is, that “‘remarkable” is by no 
means the epithet to be applied, in the way of com- 
mendation, either to anything that he has yet done, 
or to anything that he may hereafter accomplish. 
In a word, while he has undoubtedly given proof of a 
very ordinary species of talent, no man whose 
opinion is entitled to the slightest respect, will 
admit in him any indication of genius. 

The ‘‘particular merits” to which, in the case of 
Mr. Lord, we have allusion, are merely the accidental 
merits of particular passages. We say accidental— 
because poetical merit which is not simply an ac- 
cident, is very sure to be found, more or less, in a 
state of diffusion throughout a poem. No man is 
entitled to the sacred name of poet, because from 160 
pages of doggerel, may be culled a few sentences of 
worth. Nor would the case be in any respect 
altered, if these few sentences, or even if a few 

VoL. V—17 


a58 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


passages of length, were of an excellence even su- 
preme. For a poet is necessarily a man of genius, 
and with the spirit of true genius even its veriest 
common-places are intertwined and inextricably in- 
tertangled. When, therefore, amid a Sahara of 
platitude, we discover an occasional Oasis, we must 
not so far forget ourselves as to fancy any latent 
fertility in the sands. It is our purpose, however, to 
do the fullest justice to Mr. Lord, and we proceed 
at once to cull from his book whatever, in our opinion, 
will put in the fairest light his poetical pretensions. 
And first we extract the one brief passage which 

arcused in us what we recognized as the Poetical 
Sentiment. It occurs, at page 94, in ‘‘Saint Mary’s 
Gift,’’ which, although excessively unoriginal at all 
points, is upon the whole, the least reprehensible 
poem of the volume. The heroine of the story 
having taken a sleeping draught, after the manner of 
Juliet, is conveyed to a vauit, (still in the same 
manner) and (still in the same manner) awakes in 
the presence of her lover, who comes to gaze on what 
he supposes her corpse: 

And each unto the other was a dream; 

And so they gazed without a stir or breath, 

Until her head into the golden stream 


Of her wide tresses, loosened from their wreath, 
Sank back, as she did yweld agatn to death, 


At page 3, in a composition of much general 
eloquence, there occur a few lines of which we should 
not hesitate toe speak enthusiastically were we not 
perfectly aware that Mr. Lord has no claim to their 
origination: 

Ye winds 

That in the impalpable deep caves of air, 

Moving your silent plumes, in dreams of flight, 
Tumultuous lie, and from your half-stretched wings 
Beat the faint zephyrs that disturb the air! 





WILLIAM W. LORD 259 


At page 6, in the same poem, we meet also, a 
passage of high merit, although sadly disfigured: 


Thee the bright host of Heaven, 
The stars adore:—a thousand altars, fed 
By pure unwearied hands, like cressets blaze 
In the blue depths of night; nor all unseen 
In the pale sky of day, with tempered light 
Burn radiant of thy praise. 


The disfiguration to which we allude, lies in the 
making a blazing altar burn merely like a blazing 
cresset—a simile about as forcible as would be the 
likening an apple to a pear, or the seafoam to the 
froth on a pitcher of Burton’s ale. 

At page 7, still in the same poem, we find some 
verses which are very quotable, and will serve to 
make our readers understand what we mean by the 
eloquence of the piece: 


Great Worshipper! hast thou no thought of Him 
Who gave the Sun his brightness, winged the winds, 
And on the everlasting deep bestowed 

Its voiceless thunder—spread its fields of blue, 
And made them glorious like an inner sky 

From whtch the tslands rise like steadfast clouds, 
How beautiful! who gemmed thy zone with stars, 
Around thee threw his own cerulean robe,— 
And bent his coronal about thy brows, 

Shaped of the seven splendors of the light— 
Piled up the mountains for thy throne; and thee 
The image of His beauty made and power, 

And gave thee to be sharer of His state, 

His majesty, His glory, and His fear! 


We extract this not because we like it ourselves, but 
because we take it for granted that there are many 
who will, and that Mr. Lord himself would desire us 
to extract it asa specimen of his power. The ‘‘Great 
worshipper” is Nature. We disapprove, however, 
the man-milliner method in which she is tricked 


260 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


out, item by item. The ‘‘How beautiful!’ should be 
understood, we fancy, as an expression of admiration 
on the part of Mr. Lord, for the fine idea which im- 
mediately precedes—the idea which we have itali- 
cized. It is, in fact, by no means destitute of 
force—but we have met it before. 

At page 70, there are two stanzas addressed to 
‘‘My Sister.” ‘The first of these we cite as the best 
thing of equal length to be found in the book. Its 
conclusion is particularly noble. | 


And shall we meet in heaven, and know and love? 
Do human feelings in that world above 
Unchanged survive? blest thought! but ah, I fear 
That thou, dear sister, in some other sphere, 
Distant from mine will (wilt) find a brighter home, 
Where I, unworthy found, may never come:— 

Or be so high above me glorified, 

That I a meaner angel, undescried, 

Seeking thine eyes, such love alone shall see 

As angels give to all bestowed on me; 

And when my voice upon thy ear shall fall, 

Hear only such reply as angels give to all. 


We give the lines as they are: their grammatical 
construction is faulty; and the punctuation of the 
ninth line renders the sense equivocal. 

Of that species of composition which comes most 
appropriately under the head, Drivel, we should 
have no trouble in selecting as many specimens as 
our readers could desire. We will afflict them with 
one or two: 


SONG 


O soft is the ringdove’s eye of love 

When her mate returns from a weary flights 
And brightest of all the stars above 

Is the one bright star that leads the night. 


WILLIAM W. LORD 261 


But softer thine eye than the dove’s by far, 

When of friendship and pity thou speakest to me; 
And brighter,O brighter, than eve’s one star 

When of love, sweet maid, I speak to thee. 


Here is another 


SONG 


Oh, a heart it loves, it loves thee, 
That never loved before 

Oh, a heart it loves, it loves thee, 
That heart can love no more. 


As the rose was in the bud, love, , 
Ere it opened into sight, 

As yon star in drumlie daylight 
Behind the blue was bright— 


So thine image in my heart, love, 
As pure, as bright, as fair, 
Thyself unseen, unheeded, 
I saw and loved it there. 


Oh, a heart it loves, it loves thee 
As heart ne’er loved before; 

Oh, a heart, it loves, loves, loves thee, 
That heart can love no more. 


In the ‘‘Widow’s Complaint” we are entertained 
after this fashion: 


And what are these children 
I once thought my own, 

What now do they seem 
But his orphans alone? 


In ‘The New Castalia” we have it thus: 


Then a pallid beauteous maiden 
Golden ghastly robes arrayed in 

Such a wonderous strain displayed in, 
In a wonderous song of Aidenne, 
That all the gods and goddesses 
Shook their golden yellow tresses, 
Parnassus’ self made half afraid in, 


262 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Just above this there is something about aged 
beldames dreaming 


of white throats sweetly jagged 
With a ragged butch-knife dull, 

And of night-mares neighing, weighing, 
On a sleeper’s bosom squatting. 





But in mercy to our readers we forbear. 

Mr. Lord is never elevated above the dead level of 
his habitual platitude, by even the happiest thesis in 
the world. That any man could, at one and the 
same time, fancy himself a poet and string together 
as many pitiable inanities as we see here, on so 
truly suggestive a thesis as that of ‘‘A Lady taking 
the Veil,’’ is to our apprehension a miracle of miracles. 
The idea would seem to be, of itself, sufficient to 
elicit fire from ice—to breathe animation into the 
most stolid of stone. Mr. Lord winds up a disserta- 
tion on the subject by the patronizing advice— 


Ere thou, irrevocable, to that dark creed 
Art yielded, think, Oh Lady, think again, 


the whole of which would read better if it were 


Ere thou, irrevocable, to this d—d doggerel 
Art yielded, Lord, think! think!—ah think again, 


Even with the great theme, Niagara, our poet fails 
in his obvious effort to work himself into a fit of in- 
spiration. One of his poems has for title ‘‘A Hymn 
to Niagara”—but from beginning to end it is nothing 
more than a very silly ‘‘Hymn to Mr. Lord.” In- 
stead of describing the fall (as well as any Mr. Lord 
could be supposed to describe it) he rants about 
what I feel here, and about what J did not feel there 
—till at last the figure of little Mr. Lord, in the shape 
of a great capital I gets so thoroughly in between the 


WILLIAM W. LORD 263 


reader and the waterfall that not a particle of the 
latter is to be discovered. At one point the poet 
directs his soul to issue a proclamation as follows: 


Proclaim, my soul, proclaim it to the sky! 

And tell the stars, and tell the hills whose feet 
Are in the depth of earth, their peaks in heaven, 
And tell the Ocean’s old familiar face 

Beheld by day and night, in calm and storm, 
That they nor aught beside in earth or heaven, 
Like thee, tremendous torrent, have so filled 

Its thought of beauty, and so awed with might! 


The ‘‘Jis” has reference to the soul of Mr. Lord, 
who thinks it necessary to issue a proclamation to the 
stars and the hills and the ocean’s old familiar face— 
lest the stars and the hills and the ocean’s old 
familiar face should chance to be unaware of the 
fact that it, (the soul of Mr. Lord,) admitted the 
waterfall to be a fine thing—but whether the cata- 
_ ract for the compliment, or the stars for the informa- 

tion, are to be considered the party chiefly obliged 
—that, for the life of us, we cannot tell. 

From the ‘‘first impression”’ of the cataract, he 

says: 


At length my soul awaked—waked not again 
To be o’erpressed, o’ermastered, and engulphed, 
But of itself possessed, o’er all without 

Felt conscious mastery! 


And then 
Retired within, and self-withdrawn, I stood 
The two-fold centre and informing soul 
Of one vast harmony of sights and sounds, 
And from that deep abyss, that rock-built shrine, 
Though mute my own frail voice, I poured a hymn 
Of “praise and gratulation”’ like the noise 
Of banded angels when they shout to wake 
Empyreal echoes! 


264 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


That so vast a personage as Mr. Lord should not be 
o’ermastered by the cataract, but feel ‘‘conscious 
mastery over all without’’—and over all within, too 
—is certainly nothing more than reasonable and 
proper—but then he should have left the detail of 
these little facts to the cataract or to some other 
uninterested individual—even Cicero has been held 
to blame for a want of modesty—and although, to be 
sure, Cicero was not Mr. Lord, still Mr. Lord may be 
in danger of blame. He may have enemies (very 
little men!) who will pretend to deny that the ‘“hymn 
of praise and gratulation”’ (if this is the hymn) bears 
at all points more than a partial resemblance to the 
‘‘noise of banded angels when they shout to wake 
empyreal echoes.”” Not that we intend to deny it— 
but they will:—they are very little people and they 
will, 

We have said that the ‘‘remarkable”’ feature, or 
at least one of the ‘‘remarkable’’ features of this 
volume is its platitude—its flatness. Whenever the 
reader meets anything not decidedly flat, he may 
take it for granted at once, that it is stolen. When 
the poet speaks, for example, at page 148, of 


Flowers, of voung poets the first words— 


who can fail to remember the line in the Merry Wives 
of Windsor. 


Fairies use flowers for their charactery? 
At page to he says: 


Great oaks their heavenward lifted arms stretch forth 
In suppliance! 


The same thought will be found in ‘‘Pelham,” 
where the author is describing the dead tree beneath 


WILLIAM W. LORD 26% 


which is committed the murder. The grossest 
plagiarisms, indeed, abound. We would have no 
trouble, even, in pointing out a score from our most 
unimportant self. At page 27, Mr. Lord says: 


They, albeit with inward pain 
Who thought to sing thy dirge, must sing thy Pean! 


In a poem called ‘‘Lenore,’’ we have it 


Avaunt! to-night my heart is light—no dirge will I upraise, 
But waft the angel on her flight with a Pzan of old days. 


At page 13, Mr. Lord says of certain flowers that 
Ere beheld on Earth they gardened Heaven! 


We print it as printed—note of admiration and all. 
In a poem called ‘‘Al Aaraaf”’ we have it thus: 


A gemmy flower, 
Inmate of highest stars, where erst it shamed 
All other loveliness :—’twas dropped from Heaven 
And fell on gardens of the unforgiven 
In Trebizond. 


At page 57, Mr. Lord says: 


On the old and haunted mountain, 

There in dreams I dared to climb, 

Where the clear Castalian fountain 

(Silver fountain) ever tinkling 

All the green around it sprinkling 
Makes perpetual rhyme— 

To my dream enchanted, golden, 

Came a vision of the olden 
Long-forgotten time. 


There are no doubt many of our friends who will 
remember the commencement of our ‘‘Haunted 
Palace.” 


266 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


In the greenest of our valleys 
By good angels tenanted, 
Once a fair and stately palace 
(Radiant palace) reared its head. 
In the monarch Thought’s dominion 
It stood there. ’ 
Never seraph spread a pinion 
Over fabric half so fair. 
Banners yellow, glorious, golden, 
On its roof did float and flow— 
This—all this—was in the olden 
Time, long ago. 


At page 60, Mr. Lord says: 


And the aged beldames napping, 

Dreamed of gently rapping, rapping, 

With a hammer gently tapping, 
Tapping on an infant’s skull. 


In ‘‘The Raven,” we have it: 


While I pondered nearly napping, 

Suddenly there came a rapping, 

As of some one gently tapping, 
Tapping at my chamber door, 


But it is folly to pursue these thefts. As to any 
property of our own, Mr. Lord is very cordially wel- 
come to whatever use he can make of it. But others 
may not be so pacifically disposed, and the book be- 
fore us might be very materially thinned and re- 
duced in cost, by discarding from it all that belongs 
to Miss Barrett, Tennyson, Keats, Shelley, Proctor, 
Longfellow and Lowell—the very class of poets, by 
the way, whom Mr. William W. Lord, in his ‘‘New 
Castalia”’ the most especially affects to satirize and 
to contemn. 

It has been rumored, we say, or rather it has been 
announced that Mr. Lord is a graduate or perhaps a 
Professor of Princeton College—but we have had 


WILLIAM W. LORD 264 


much difficulty in believing anything of the kind. 
The pages before us are not only utterly devoid of 
that classicism of tone and manner—that better 
species of classicism which a liberal education never 
fails to impart—but they abound in the most out- 
rageously vulgar violations of grammar—of prosody 
in its most extended sense. 

Of versification, and all that appertains to it, Mr. 
Lord is ignorant in the extreme. We doubt if he 
can tell the difference between a dactyl and an ana- 
pest. In the Heroic (Jambic) Pentameter he is 
continually introducing such verses as these: 


A faint symphony to Heaven ascending— 
No heart of love, O God, Infinite One— 
Of a thought as weak as aspiration— 
Who were the original priests of this— 
Of grace, magnificence and power— 
O’er whelm me; this darkness that shuts out the sky— 


Alexandrines, in the same metre, are encountered 
at every step—but it is very clear from the points at 
which they are met, and at which the cesura is 
placed, that Mr. Lord has no idea of employing them 
as Alexandrines:—They are merely excessive, that 
is to say, defective Pentameters. Ina word, judging 
by his rhythm, we might suppose that the poet 
could neither see, hear, nor make use of his fingers. 
We do not know, in America, a versifier so utterly 
wretched and contemptible. 

His most extraordinary sins, however, are in point 
of English. Here is his dedication, embodied in the 
very first page of the book:— 

“*To Professor Albert B. Dod, These Poems, the 
offspring of an Earnest (if ineffectual) Desire 
towards the True and Beautiful, which were hardly 


268 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


my own by Paternity, when they became his by 
adoption, are inscribed, with all Reverence and 
Affection, by the Author.”’ 

What is anybody to make of all this? What is the 
meaning of a desire toward?—and is it the ‘‘True 
and Beautiful’”’ or the “‘Poems”’ which were hardly 
Mr. Lord’s own by paternity before they became his 
[Mr. Dod’s] by adoption.” 

At page 12. we read: 


Think heedless one, or who with wanton step 
Tramples the flowers. 


At page 7s, within the compass of eleven lines, we 
have three of the grossest blunders: 


Oh Thou for whom as in thyself Thou art, 
And by thyself perceived, we know no name, 
Nor dare not seek to express—but unto us, 
Adonai! who before the heavens were built 
Or Earth’s foundation laid, within thyself, 
Thine own most glorious habitation dwelt, 
But when within the abyss, 

With sudden light illuminated, 

Thou, thine image to behold, 

Into its quickened depths 

Looked down with brooding eyel 


At page 79, we read: 


But ah! my heart, unduteous to my will, 

Breathes only sadness; like an instrument 

From whose quick strings, when hands devoid of skill 
Solicit joy, hey murmur and lament. 


At page 86, is something even grosser than this: 


And still and rapt as pictured Saint might be 
Like saint-like seemed as her she did adore. 


WILLIAM W.. LORD 269 


At page 129, there is a similar error: 


With half-closed eyes and ruffled feathers known 
As them that fly not with the changing year. 


At page 128, we find— 


And thou didst dwell therein so truly loved 
As none have been nor shall be loved again, 
And yet perceived not, &c. 


At page 155, we have— 


But yet it may not cannot be 
That thou at length hath sunk to rest. 


Invariably Mr. Lord writes didst did’st; couldst 
could’st, &c. The fact is he is absurdly ignorant of 
the commonest principles of grammar—and the only 
excuse we can make to our readers for annoying them 
with specifications in this respect is that, without the 
specifications we should never have been believed. 

But enough of this folly. We are heartily tired 
of the book, and thoroughly disgusted with the im- 
pudence of the parties who have been aiding and 
abetting in thrusting it before the public. To the 
poet himself we have only to say—from any farther 
specimens of your stupidity, good Lord deliver us! 


240 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 


WR. BRYANT’S position in the poetical 
fH world is, perhaps, better settled than that 

) J. of any American. There is less difference 
of opinion about his rank; but, as usual, the agree- 
ment is more decided in private literary circles 
than in what appears to be the public expression 
of sentiment as gleaned from the press. I may 
as well observe here, too, that this coincidence of 
opinion in private circles is in all cases very notice- 
able when compared [with the discrepancy of the 
apparent public opinion. In private it is quite 
a rare thing to find any strongly-marked disagree- 
ment—I mean, of course, about mere autorial » 
merit. The author accustomed to seclusion, and 
mingling for the first time freely with the literary 
people about him, is invariably startled and de- 
lighted to find that the decisions of his own unbiased 
judgment—decisions to which he has refrained 
from giving voice on account of their broad contra- 
diction to the decision of the press—are sustained 
and considered quite as matters of course by almost 
every person with whom he converses. ‘The fact is, 
that when brought face to face with each other, we 
are constrained to a certain amount of honesty by the 
sheer trouble it causes us to mould the countenance 
toalie. We put on paper with a grave air what we 
could not for our lives assert personally to a friend 
without either blushing or laughing outright. That 
the opinion of the press is not an honest opinion, 
that necessarily it is impossible that it should be an 





WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 271 


honest opinion, is never denied by the members of the 
press themselves. Individual presses, of course, 
are now and then honest, but I speak of the com- 
bined effect. Indeed, it would be difficult for those 
conversant with the modus operandi of public 
_ journals to deny the general falsity of impression 
conveyed. Let in America a book be published by 
an unknown, careless or uninfluential author; if he 
publishes it ‘‘on his own account,” he will be con- 
founded at finding that no notice of it is taken at all. 
If it has been entrusted to a publisher of caste, there 
will appear forthwith in each of the leading business 
papers a variously-phrased critique to the extent 
of three or four lines, and to the effect that ‘‘we have 
received, from the fertile press of So and So, a volume 
entitled This and That, which appears to be well 
worthy persual, and which is ‘got up’ in the custom- 
ary neat style of the enterprising firm of So and So.” 
On the other hand, let our author have acquired in- 
fluence, experience, or (what will stand him in good 
stead of either) effrontery, on the issue of his book 
he will obtain from his publisher a hundred copies 
(or more, as the case may be,) ‘‘for distribution 
among friends connected with the press.”” Armed 
with these, he will call personally either at the 
office or (if he understands his game) at the private 
residence of every editor within his reach, enter into 
conversation, compliment the journalist, interest 
him, as if incidentally, in the subject of the book, and 
finally, watching an opportunity, beg leave to hand 
him ‘‘a volume which, quite opportunely, is on the 
very matter now under discussion.” If the editor 
seems sufficiently interested, the rest is left to fate; 
but if there is any lukewarmness, (usually indicated 
by a polite regret on the editor’s part that he really 
has ‘‘no time to render the work that justice which 


272 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


its importance demands,’’) then our author is pre- 
pared to understand and to sympathize; has, luckily, 
a friend thoroughly conversant with the topic, and 
who (perhaps) could be persuaded to write some 
account of the volume—provided that the editor 
would be kind enough just to glance over the 
critique and amend it in accordance with his own 
particular views. Glad to fill half a column or so of 
his editorial space, and still more glad to get rid of 
his visitor, the journalist assents. The author 
retires, consults the friend, instructs him touching 
the strong points of the volume, and insinuating in 
some shape a quid pro quo, gets an elaborate critique 
written, (or, what is more usual and far more simple, 
writes it himself,) and his business in this individual 
quarter is accomplished. Nothing more than sheer 
impudence is requisite to accomplish it in all. 

Now the effect of this system (for it has really 
prown to be such) is obvious. In ninety-nine cases | 
out of a hundred, men of genius, too indolent and 
careless about worldly concerns to bestir themselves 
after this fashion, have also that pride of intellect 
which would prevent them, under any circumstances, 
from even insinuating, by the presentation of a book 
to a member of the press, a desire to have that book 
reviewed. They, consequently, and their works, 
are utterly overwhelmed and extinguished in the 
flood of the apparent public adulation upon which in 
gilded barges are borne triumphant the ingenious 
toady and the diligent quack. 

In general, the books of the toadies and quacks, 
not being read at all, are safe from any contradiction 
of this self-bestowed praise; but now and then it 
happens that the excess of the laudation works out 
in part its own remedy. Men of leisure, hearing one 
of the toady works commencled, look at it, read its 


WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 273 


preface and a few pages of its body, and throw it 
aside with disgust, wondering at the ill taste of the 
editors who extol it. But there is an iteration, and 
then a continuous reiteration of the panegyric, till 
these men of leisure begin to suspect themselves 
in the wrong, to fancy that there may really be 
something good lying perdu in the volume. Ina fit 
of desperate curiosity they read it through critically, 
their indignation growing hotter at each succeeding 
page till it gets the better even of contempt. The 
result is, that reviews now appear in various quarters 
entirely at variance with the opinions so generally 
expressed, and which, but for these indignation re- 
views, would have passed universally current as the 
opinion of the public. It isin this manner that those 
gross seeming discrepancies arise which so often 
astonish us, but which vanish instantaneously in 
private society. 

But although it may be said, in general, that Mr. 
Bryant’s position is comparatively well settled, still 
for some time past there has been a growing tendency 
to under-estimate him. The new _licentious 
‘“‘schools” of poetry—I do not now speak of the 
transcendentalists, who are the merest nobodies, 
fatiguing even themselves—but the Tennysonian and 
Barrettian schools, having, in their rashness of spirit, 
much in accordance with the whole spirit of the age, 
thrown into the shade necessarily all that seems akin 
to the conservatism of half a century ago. The 
conventionalities, even the most justifiable decora 
of composition, are regarded, per se, with a suspi- 
cious eye. When I say per se, I mean that, from 
finding them so long in connexion with conservatism 
of thought, we have come at last to dislike them, 
not merely as the outward visible signs of that con- 
servatism, but as things evil in themselves. It is 

VoL, V—18 


aA EDGAR ALLAN POE 


very clear that those accuracies and elegancies of 
style, and of general manner, which in the time of 
Pope were considered as prima facie and indispensable 
indications of genius, are now conversely regarded. 
How’ few are willing to admit the possibility of recon- 
ciling genius with artistic skill! Yet this recon- 
ciliation is not only possible, but an absolute ne- 
cessity. It is a mere prejudice which has hitherto 
prevented the union, by studiously insisting upon a 
natural repulsion which not only does not exist, but 
which is at war with all the analogies of nature. 
The greatest poems will not be written until this 
prejudice is annihilated; and I mean to express a 
very exalted opinion of Mr. Bryant when I say that 
his works in time to come will do much towards the 
annihilation. 

I have never disbelieved in the perfect consistency, 
and even congeniality, of the highest genius and the — 
profoundest art; but in the case of the author of 
‘The Ages,’’ I have fallen into the general error of 
undervaluing his poetic ability on account of the 
mere ‘‘elegancies and accuracies’’ to which allusion 
has already been made. I confess that, with an 
absolute abstraction from all personal feelings, and 
with the most sincere intention to do justice, I was 
at one period beguiled into this popular error; there 
can be no difficulty, therefore, on my part, in ex- 
cusing the inadvertence in others. 

It will never do to claim for Bryant a genius of the 
loftiest order, but there has been latterly, since the 
days of Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Lowell, a growing 
disposition to deny him genius in any respect. He 
is now commonly spoken of as ‘‘a man of high poet- 
ical talent, very ‘correct,’ with a warm appreciation 
of the beauty of nature and great descriptive powers, 
but rather too much of the old-school manner of 


WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 27 


Cowper, Goldsmith and Young.” This is the truth, 
but not the whole truth. Mr. Bryant has genius, 
and that of a marked character, but it has been over- 
looked by modern schools, because deficient in those 
externals which have become in a measure symboli- 
cal of those schools. 

Dr. Griswold, in summing up his comments on 
Bryant, has the following significant objections: 
“His genius is not versatile; he has related no his- 
tory; he has not sung of the passion of love; he has 
not described artificial life. Still the tenderness 
and feeling in “The Death of the Flowers,’ ‘Rizpah,’ 
‘The Indian Girl’s Lament,’ and other pieces, 
show that he might have excelled in delineations 
of the gentler passions had he made them his 
study.” 

Now, in describing no artificial life, in relating no 
history, in not singing the passion of love, the poet 
has merely shown himself the profound artist, has 
merely evinced a proper consciousness that such are 
not the legitimate themes of poetry. That they are 
not, I have repeatedly shown, or attempted to show, 
and to go over the demonstration now would be 
foreign to the gossiping and desultory nature of the 
present article. What Dr. Griswold means by “‘the 
gentler passions” is, I presume, not very clear to 
himself, but it is possible that he employs the phrase 
in consequence of the gentle, unpassionate emotion 
induced by the poems of which he quotes the titles. 
It is precisely this ‘‘unpassionate emotion”’ which is 
the limit of the true poetical art. Passion proper 
and poesy are discordant. Poetry, in elevating, 
tranquilizes the soul. With the heart it has nothing 
to do. For a fuller explanation of these views I 
refer the reader to an analysis of a poem by Mrs. 
Welby—an analysis contained in an article called 


276 EDGAR ALLEN POE 


‘‘Marginalia,” and published about a year ago in 
‘‘The Democratic Review.” 

The editor of ‘‘The Poets and Poetry of America”’ 
thinks the literary precocity of Bryant remarkable. 
‘“There are few recorded more remarkable,”’ he says. 
The first edition of ‘‘The Embargo” was in 1808, 
and the poet was born in 1794; he was more than 
thirteen, then, when the satire’ was printed—al- 
though it is reported to have been written a year 
earlier. I quote a few lines. 


Oh, might some patriot rise, the gloom dispel, 
Chase Error’s mist and break the magic spell! 

But vain the wish; for, hark! the murmuring meed 
Of hoarse applause from yonder shed proceed. 
Enter and view the thronging concourse there, 
Intent with gaping mouth and stupid stare; _ 
While in the midst their supple leader stands, 
Harangues aloud and flourishes his hands, 

To adulation tunes his servile throat, 

And sues successful for each blockhead’s vote. 


This is a fair specimen of the whole, both as regards 
its satirical and rhythmical power. A satire is, of 
‘ourse, no poem. I have known boys of an earlier 
age do better things, although the case is rare. All 
depends upon the course of education. Bryant’s 
father ‘‘was familiar with the best English literature, 
and perceiving in his son indications of superior 
genius, attended carefully to his instruction, taught 
him the art of composition, and guided his literary 
taste.”’ This being understood, the marvel of such 
verse as I have quoted ceases at once, even admitting 
it to be thoroughly the boy’s own work; but it is 
difficult to make any such admission. ‘The father 
must have suggested, revised, retouched. 

The longest poem of Bryant is ‘‘The Ages”— 
thirty-five Spenserian stanzas. It is the one im- 


WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 277 


proper theme of its author. The design is, ‘‘from a 
survey of the past ages of the world, and of the suc- 
cessive advances of mankind in knowledge and vir- 
tue, to justify and confirm the hopes of the philan- 
thropist for the future destinies of the human race.”’ 
All this would have been more rationally, because 
more effectually, accomplished in prose. Dismissing 
it as a poem, (which in its general tendency it is not,) 
one might commend the force of its argumentation 
but for the radical error of deducing a hope oi 
progression from the cycles of physical nature. 

The sixth stanza is a specimen of noble versifica- 
tion (within the narrow limits of the lambic Penta- 
meter). 


Look on this beautiful world and read the truth 

In her fair page; see, every season brings 

New change in her of everlasting youth; 

Still the green soil with joyous living things 
Swarms; the wide air is full of joyous wings; 

And myriads still are happy in the sleep 

Of Ocean’s azure gulfs and where he flings 

The restless surge. Eternal Love doth keep 

In his complacent arms, the earth, the air, the deep. 


The cadences here at page, swarms and surge, can- 
not be surpassed. There are comparatively few 
consonants. Liquids and the softer vowels abound, 
and the partial line after the pause at ‘‘surge,”’ 
with the stately march of the succeeding Alex- 
andrine, is one of the finest conceivable finales. 

The poem, in general, has unity, completeness. 
Its tone of calm, elevated and hopeful contemplation, 
is well sustained throughout. There is an occasional 
quaint grace of expression, as in 


Nurse of full streams and lifter up of proud 
Sky-mingling mountains that o’erlook the cloud: 


278 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


or of antithetical and rhythmical force combined, 
as in 


The shock that hurled 
To dust, in many fragments dashed and strown 
The throne whose roots were in another world 
And whose far-stretching shadow awed our own. 


But we look in vain for anything more worthy 
commendation. 

‘‘Thanatopsis’’ is the poem by which its author is 
best known, but is by no means his best poem. It 
owes the extent of its celebrity to its nearly absolute 
freedom from defect, in the ordinary understanding 
of the term. I mean to say that its negative merit 
recommends it to the public attention. It is a 
thoughtful, well phrased, well constructed, well 
versified poem. The concluding thought is ex- 
ceedingly noble, and has done wonders for the suc- 
cess of the whole composition. 

‘‘The Waterfowl” is very beautiful, but like 
‘‘Thanatopsis,’’ owes a great deal to its completeness 
and pointed termination. 

‘‘Oh, Fairest of the Rural Maids!’ will strike 
every poet as the truest poem written by Bryant. 
It is richly ideal. 

‘‘June”’’ is sweet and perfectly well modulated in 
its rhythm, and inexpressibly pathetic. It serves 
well to illustrate my previous remarks about passion 
in its connexion with poetry. In ‘‘June” there is, 
very properly, nothing of the intense passion of 
grief, but the subdued sorrow which comes up, 
as if perforce, to the surface of the poet’s gay 
sayings about his grave, we find thrilling us to 
the soul, while there is yet a spiritual elevation in 
the thrill, 


WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 279 


And what if cheerful shouts at noon 
Come, from the village sent, 

Or songs of maids beneath the moon 
With fairy laughter blent? 

And what if, in the evening light, 

Betrothed lovers walk in sight 
Of my low monument? 

I would the lovely scene around 

Might know no sadder sight nor sound. 

I know—I know I should not see 
The season’s glorious show, 

Nor would its brightness shine for me 
Nor its wild music flow; 

But if around my place of sleep 

The friends I love should come to weep, 
They might not haste to go:— 

Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom, 

Should keep them lingering by my tomb. 


The thoughts here belong to the highest class of 
poetry, the imaginative-natural, and are of them- 
selves sufficient to stamp their author a man of 
genius. 

I copy at random a few passages of similar cast, 
inducing a similar conviction. 


The great heavens 
Seem to stoop down upon the scene in love, 
A nearer vault and of a tenderer blue 
Than that which bends above the eastern hills..... 


Till twilight blushed, and lovers walked and wooed 
In a foregotten language and old tunes 

From instruments of unremembered form 

Gave the soft winds a voice..... 


Breezes of the south, 
That toss the golden and the flame-ltke flowers, 
And pass the prairie hawk, that, poised on high, 
Flaps his broad wings, yet moves not..... 


280 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


On the breast of earth 
I lie, and listen to her mighty voice— 
A voice of many tones sent up from streams 
That wander through the gloom, from woods unseen; 
Swayed by the sweeping of the tides of atr; 
From rocky chasms where darkness dwells all day 
And hollows of the great invisible hills, 
And sands that edge the ocean, stretching far 
Into the night—a melancholy sound!.... 


All the green herbs 
Are stirring in his breath; a thousand flowers 
By the road side and the borders of the brook, 
Nod gayly to each other. 


[There is a fine ‘‘echo of sound to sense” in ‘‘the 
borders of the brook,” etc.; and in the same poem 
from which these lines are taken, (‘‘The Summer 
Wind,’’) may be found two other equally happy 
examples, e. g. 


For me, I lie 
Languidly in the shade, where the thick turf, 
Yet virgin from the kisses of the sun, 
Retains some freshness. 


And again— 


All is silent, save the faint 
And interrupted murmur of the bee 
Settling on the sick flowers, and then again 
Instantly on the wing. 


I resume the imaginative extracts. ] 


Paths, homes, graves, ruins from the lowest glen 
To where life shrinks from the fierce Alpine atr..... 
And the blue gentian flower that in the breeze 
Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last..... 
A shoot of that old vine that made 
The nations silent in the shade..... 
But ’neath yon crimson tree, 
Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame, 
Nor mark, within its roseate canopy, 
Her flush of maiden shame..... 


WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 281 


The mountains that infold, 
In their wild sweep, the colored landscape round, 
Seem groups of giant kings in purple and gold 
That guard the enchanted ground. 


[This latter passage is especially beautiful. 
Happily to endow inanimate nature with sentience 
and a capability of action, is one of the severest tests 
of the poet.] 


. There is a power whose care 

T eaches thy way along that pathless coast, 
The desert and tllimitable atr. 

Lone, wandering, but not lost..... 


Pleasant shall be thy way, where weekly bows 
The shutting flowers and darkling waters pass, 
And ‘twixt the o’ershadowing branches and the grass... 


Sweet odors in the sea air, sweet and strange, 
Shall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore, 

And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem 

He hears the rustling leaf and running stream..... 





In a ‘‘Sonnet, To ,’ are some richly imagina- 
tive lines. I quote the whole. 


Ay, thou art for the grave; thy glances shine 
Too brightly to shine long: another spring 

Shall deck her for men’s eyes, but not for thine, 
Sealed in a sleep which knows no waking. 

The fields for thee have no medicinal leaf, 
And the vexed are no mineral of power; 

And they who love thee wait in anxious grief 
Till the slow plague shall bring the fatal hour. 

Glide softly to thy rest, then: death should come 
Gently to one of gentle mould like thee, 

As light winds wandering through groves of bloom, 
Detach the delicate blossom from the tree, 

Close thy sweet eyes calmly and without pain, 

And we will trust in God to see thee yet again. 


282 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


The happiest finale to these brief extracts will be 
the magnificent conclusion of ‘‘Thanatopsis.” 


So live, that, when thy summons comes to join 

The innumerable caravan that moves 

To that mysterious realm where each shall take 

His chamber tn the silent halls of death, 

Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night, 
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave— 

Like one that draws the drapery of his couch 

About him and lies down to pleasant dreams. 


In the minor morals of the muse Mr. Bryant excels. 
In versification (as far as he goes) he is unsurpassed in 
America—unless, indeed, by Mr. Sprague. Mr. 
Longfellow is not so thorough a versifier within Mr. 
Bryant’s limits, but a far better one upon the whole, 
on account of his greater range. Mr. B., however, is 
by no means always accurate—or defensible, for 
accurate is not the term. His lines are occasionally 
unpronounceable through excess of harsh consonants, 
as in 


As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool 
clear sky. 


Now and then he gets out of his depth in attempt- 
ing anapestic rhythm, of which he makes sad havoc, 
as in 


And Rispah, once the loveliest of all 
That bloomed and smiled in the court of Saul. 


Not unfrequently, too, even his pentameters are 
inexcusably rough, as in 


Kind influence. Lo! their orbs burn more bright. 


which can only be read metrically by drawing out 
“influence’”’ into three marked syllables, shortening 


WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 283 


the long monosyllable ‘‘Lo!’’ and lengthening the 
short one ‘‘their.”’ 

Mr. Bryant is not devoid of mannerisms, one of 
the most noticeable of which is his use of the epithet 
“fold” preceded by some other adjective, e. g.— 


In all that proud old world beyond the deep; 
There is a tale about these gray old rocks; 

The wide old woods resounded with her song; 
And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven, 


etc. etc. etc. These duplicates occur so frequently 
as to excite a smile upon each repetition. 

Of merely grammatical errors the poet is rarely 
guilty. Faulty constructions are more frequently 
chargeable to him. In ‘“‘The Massacre of Scio” 
we read— 


Till the last link of slavery’s chain 
Is shivered to be worn no more, 


What shall be worn no more? The chain, of course 
—but the link is implied. It will be understood 
that I pick these flaws only with difficulty from the 
poems of Bryant. He is, in the ‘‘minor morals,” 
the most generally correct of our poets. 

He is now fifty-two years of age. In height, he is, 
perhaps, five feet nine. His frame is rather robust. 
His features are large but thin. His countenance is 
sallow, nearly bloodless. His eyes are piercing 
gray, deep set, with large projecting eyebrows. 
His mouth is wide and massive, the expression of the 
smile hard, cold—even sardonic. The forehead is 
broad, with prominent organs of ideality; a good deal 
bald; the hair thin and grayish, as are also the 
whiskers, which he wears in a simple style. His 
bearing is quite distinguished, full of the aristocracy 
of intellect. In general, he looks in _ better 


284 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


health than before his last visit to England. He 
seems active—physically and morally energetic. 
His dress is plain to the extreme of simplicity, al- 
though of late there is a certain degree of Anglicism 
about. it. 

In character no man stands more loftily than 
Bryant. The peculiarly melancholy expression of 
his countenance has caused him to be accused of 
harshness, or coldness of heart. Never was there 
a greater mistake. His soul is charity itself, in all 
respects generous and noble. His manners are un- 
doubtedly reserved. 

Of late days he has nearly, if not altogether 
abandoned literary pursuits, although still editing, 
with unabated vigor, ‘‘The New York Evening 
Post.” He is married, (Mrs. Bryant still living,) 
has two daughters, (one of them Mrs. Parke Godwin,) 
and is residing for the present at Vice-Chancellor 
McCown’s, near the junction of Warren and Church 
streets. 


NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 285 


NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE* 


HE reputation of the author of ‘‘Twice- 
Told Tales” has been confined, until very 
lately, to literary society; and I have not been 
wrong, perhaps, in citing him as the example, par 
excellence, in this country, of the privately-admired 
and publicly-unappreciated man of genius. Within 
the last year or two, it is true, an occasional critic 
has been urged, by honest indignation, into very 
warm approval. Mr. Webber, for instance, (than 
whom no one has a keener relish for that kind of 
writing which Mr. Hawthorne has best illustrated,) 
gave us, in a late number of ‘‘The American Re- 
view,’ a cordial and certainly a full tribute to his 
talents; and since the issue of the ‘‘Mosses from an 
Old Manse,”’ criticisms of similar tone have been by 
no means infrequent in our more authoritative 
journals. I can call to mind few reviews of Haw- 
thorne published before the ‘‘Mosses.”” One I re- 
member in ‘‘Arcturus’”’ (edited by Matthews and 
Duyckinck) for May, 1841; another in the ‘‘ American 
Monthly” (edited by Hoffman and Herbert) for 
March, 1838; a third in the ninety-sixth number of 
the ‘‘North American Review.” ‘These criticisms, 
however, seemed to have little effect on the popular 
taste—at least, if we are to form any idea of the 
popular taste by reference to its expression in the 
newspapers, or by the sale of the author’s book. It 
*Twice-Told Tales. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. James 
Munroe & Co., Boston. 1842. 


Mosses from an Old Manse. By Nathaniel Hawthorne, 
Wiley & Putnam, New York. 184 


286 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


was never the fashion (until lately) to speak of him 
in any summary of our best authors. 

The daily critics would say, on such occasions, 
‘Is there not Irving and Cooper, and Bryant, and 
Paulding, and—Smith?” or, “‘Have we not Halleck 
and Dana, and Longfellow, and—Thompson?”’ or, 
‘Can we not point triumphantly to our own Sprague, 
Willis, Channing, Bancroft, Prescott and—Jenkins?”’ 
but these unanswerable queries were never wound 
up by the name of Hawthorne. 

Beyond doubt, this inappreciation of him on the 
part of the public arose chiefly from the two causes 
to which I have referred—from the facts that he is 
neither a man of wealth nor a quack; but these are 
insufficient to account for the whole effect. No 
small portion of it is attributable to the very marked 
idiosyncrasy of Mr. Hawthorne himself. In one 
sense, and in great measure, to be peculiar is to be 
original, and than the true originality there is no © 
higher literary virtue. This true or commendable 
originality, however, implies not the uniform, but 
the continuous peculiarity—a peculiarity springing 
from ever-active vigor of fancy—better still if from 
ever-present force of imagination, giving its own hue, 
its own character to everything it touches, and, 
especially, self impelled to touch everything. 

It is often said, inconsiderately, that very original 
writers always fail in popularity—that such and 
such persons are too original to be comprehended by 
the mass. ‘Too peculiar,” should be the phrase, 
‘“‘too idiosyncratic.” It is, in fact, the excitable, 
undisciplined and child-like popular mind which 
most keenly feels the original. 

The criticism of the conservatives, of the hack- 
neys, of the cultivated old clergymen of the ‘‘North 
American Review,’’ is precisely the criticism which 


NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 287 


condemns and alone condemnsit. ‘‘It becometh not 
a divine,” saith Lord Coke, ‘‘to be of a fiery and 
salamandrine spirit.” Their conscience allowing 
them to move nothing themselves, these dignitaries 
have a holy horror of being moved. ‘‘Give us 
quietude,” they say. Opening their mouths with 
proper caution, they sigh forth the word ‘‘ Repose.” 
And this is, indeed, the one thing they should be 
permitted to enjoy, if only upon the Christian prin- 
ciple of give and take. 

The fact is, that if Mr. Hawthorne were really 
original, he could not fail of making himself felt by 
the public. But the fact is, he is not original in any 
sense. Those who speak of him as original, mean 
nothing more than that he differs in his manner or 
tone, and in his choice of subjects, from any author 
of their acquaintance—their acquaintance not ex- 
tending to the German Tieck, whose manner, in 
some of his works, is absolutely identical with that 
habitual to Hawthorne. But it is clear that the ele- 
ment of the literary originality is novelty. The ele- 
ment of its appreciation by the reader is the reader’s 
sense of the new. Whatever gives him a new 
and insomuch a pleasurable emotion, he considers 
original, and whoever frequently gives him such 
emotion, he considers an original writer. In a word, 
it is by the sum total of these emotions that he de- 
cides upon the writer’s claim to originality. I may 
observe here, however, that there is clearly a point 
at which even novelty itself would cease to produce 
the legitimate originality, if we judge this originality, 
as we should, by the effect designed: this point is 
that at which novelty becomes nothing novel; and here 
the artist, to preserve his originality, will subside 
into the commonplace. No one, I think, has noticed 
that, merely through inattention to this matter, 


288 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Moore has comparatively failed in his ‘‘ Lalla Rookh.” 
Few readers, and indeed few critics, have com- 
mended this poem for originality—and, in fact, the 
effect, originality, is not produced by it—yet_no 
work of equal size so abounds in the happiest 
originalities, individually considered. They are so 
excessive as, in the end, to deaden in the reader 
all capacity for their appreciation. 

These points properly understood, it will be seen 
that the critic (unacquainted with Tieck) who reads 
a single tale or essay by Hawthorne, may be 
justified in thinking him original; but the tone, or 
manner, or choice of subject, which induces in this 
critic the sense of the new, will—if not in a second 
tale, at least in a third and all subsequent ones—not 
only fail of inducing it, but bring about an exactly 
antagonistic impression. In concluding a volume, 
and more especially in concluding all the volumes 


of the author, the critic will abandon his first design 


of calling him ‘‘original,’’ and content himself with 
styling him ‘‘peculiar.”’ 
With the vague opinion that to be original is to be 


unpopular, I could, indeed, agree, were I to adopt ~ 


an understanding of originality which, to my sur- 
prise, I have known adopted by many who have a 
right to be called critical. They have limited, in a 


love for mere words, the literary to the metaphysical © 


originality. They regard as original in letters, only 
such combinations of thought, of incident, and so 
forth, as are, in fact, absolutely novel. It is clear, 
however, not only that it is the novelty of effect 
alone which is worth consideration, but that this 
effect is best wrought, for the end of all fictitious com- 
position, pleasure, by shunning rather than by 
seeking the absolute novelty of combination. Origi- 
nality, thus understood, tasks and startles the in- 


NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 289 


teilect, and so brings into undue action the faculties 
to which, in the lighter literature, we least appeal. 
And thus understood, it cannot fail to prove un- 
popular with the masses, who, seeking in this litera- 
ture amusement, are positively offended by in- 
struction. But the true originality—true in re- 
spect of its purposes—is that which, in bringing out 
the half-formed, the reluctant, or the unexpressed 
fancies of mankind, or in exciting the more delicate 
pulses of the heart’s passion, or in giving birth to 
some universal sentiment or instinct in ‘embryo, 
thus combines with the pleasurable effect of ap- 
parent novelty, a real egotistic delight. The reader, 
in the case first supposed, (that of the absolute 
novelty,) is excited, bizt embarrassed, disturbed, 
in some degree even pained at his own want of per- 
ception, at his own folly in not having himself hit 
upon the idea. In the second case, his pleasure is 
doubled. He is filled with an intrinsic and an ex- 
trinsic delight. He feels and intensely enjoys the 
seeming novelty of the thought, enjoys it as really 
novel, as absolutely original with the writer—and 
himself. They two, he fancies, have, alone of all 
men, thought thus. They two have, together, 
created this thing. Henceforward there is a bond 
of sympathy between them—a sympathy which 
irradiates every subsequent page of the book. 

There is a species of writing which, with some 
difficulty, may be admitted as a lower degree of 
what I have called the true original. In its perusal 
we say to ourselves, not ‘‘how original this is!” 
nor “‘here is an idea which I and the author have 
alone entertained,’ but ‘‘here is a charmingly 
obvious fancy,” or sometimes even, “‘here is a 
thought which I am not sure has ever occurred to 
myself, but which, of course, has occurred to all the 

VoL, V—19 is 


290 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


rest of the world.’’ This kind of composition (which 
still appertains to a high order) is usually designated 
as ‘‘the natural.’’ It has little external resemblance, 
but strong internal affinity to the true original, if, 
indéed, as I have suggested, it is not of this latter 
an inferior degree. It is best exemplified, among 
English writers, in Addison, Irving and Hawthorne. 
The ‘‘ease’’ which is so often spoken of as its dis- 
tinguishing feature, it has been the fashion to regard 
as ease in appearance alone, as a point of really dif- 
ficult attainment. This idea, however, must be 
received with some reservation. ‘The natural style 
is difficult only to those who should never inter- 
meddle with it—to the unnatural. It is but the 
result of writing with the understanding, or with the 
instinct that the fone, in composition, should be 
that which, at any given point or upon any given 
topic, would be the tone of the great mass of human- 
ity. The author who, after the manner of the North 
Americans, is merely at all times quiet, is, of course, 
upon most occasions, merely silly or stupid, and has 
no more right to be thought ‘‘easy” or ‘‘natural” 
than has a cockney exquisite, or the sleeping beauty 
in the wax-works. 

The ‘‘peculiarity,’’ or sameness, or monotone of 
Hawthorne, would, in its mere character of ‘‘peculi- 
arity,” and without reference to what zs the peculi- — 
arity, suffice to deprive him of all chance of popular 
appreciation. But at his failure to be appreciated, 
we can, of course, no longer wonder, when we find — 
him monotonous at decidedly the worst of all possible 
points—at that point which, having the least con- 
cern with Nature, is the farthest removed from the 
popular intellect, from the popular sentiment, and 
from the popular taste. I allude to the strain of 
allegory which completely overwhelms the greater 


> 


NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 201 


number of his subjects, and which in some measure 
interferes with the direct conduct of absolutely all. 

In defence of allegory, (however, or for whatever 
object employed,) there is scarcely one respectable 
word to be said. Its best appeals are made to the 
fancy—that is to say, to our sense of adaptation, 
not of matters proper, but of matters improper for 
the purpose, of the real with the unreal; having never 
more of intelligible connexion than has something 
with nothing, never half so much of effective affinity 
as has the substance for the shadow. The deepest 
emotion aroused within us by the happiest allegory, 
as allegory, is a very, very imperfectly satisfied sense 
of the writer’s ingenuity in overcoming a difficulty 
we should have preferred his not having attempted 
to overcome. The fallacy of the idea that allegory, 
in any of its moods, can be made to enforce a truth 
—that metaphor, for example, may illustrate as well 
as embellish an argument—could be promptly 
demonstrated; the converse of the supposed fact 
might be shown, indeed, with very little trouble— 
but these are topics foreign to my present purpose. 
One thing is clear, that if allegory ever establishes 
a fact, it is by dint of overturning a fiction. Where 
the suggested meaning runs through the obvious one 
in a very profound undercurrent, so as never to in- 
terfere with the upper one without our own volition, 
so as never to show itself unless called to the surface, 
there only, for the proper uses of fictitious narrative, 
is it available at all. Under the best circumstances, 
it must always interfere with that unity of effect 
which, to the artist, is worth all the allegory in the 
world. Its vital injury, however, is rendered to the 
most vitally important point in fiction—that of 
earnestness or verisimilitude. That ‘‘The Pilgrim’s 
Progress” is a ludicrously over-rated book, owing its 


292 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


seeming popularity to one or two of those accidents 
in critical literature which by the critical are suff- 
ciently well understood, is a matter upon which no 
two thinking people disagree; but the pleasure 
derivable from it, in any sense, will be found in the 
direct ratio of the reader’s capacity to smother its 
true purpose, in the direct ratio of his ability to keep 
the allegory out of sight, or of his znability to com- 
prehendit. Of allegory properly handled, judiciously 
subdued, seen only as a shadow or by suggestive 
glimpses, and making its nearest approach to truth in 
a not obtrusive and therefore not unpleasant appostte- 
ness, the ‘‘Undine” of De La Motte Fouqué is the 
best, and undoubtedly a very remarkable specimen. 

The obvious causes, however, which have pre- 
vented Mr. Hawthorne’s popularity, do not suffice 
to condemn him in the eyes of the few who belong 
properly to books, and to whom books, perhaps, do 
not quite so properly belong. These few estimate — 
an author, not as do the public, altogether by what 
he does, but in great measure—indeed, even in the 
greatest measure—by what he evinces a capability 
of doing. In this view, Hawthorne stands among 
literary people in America much in the same light 
as did Coleridge in England. The few, also, through 
a certain warping of the taste, which long pondering 
upon books as books merely never fails to induce, are 
not in condition to view the errors of a scholar as 
errors altogether. At any time these gentlemen are 
prone to think the public not right rather thah an 
educated author wrong. But the simple truth is, 
that the writer who aims at impressing the people, 
is always wrong when he fails in forcing that people 
to receive the impression. How far Mr. Hawthorne 
has addressed the people at all, is, of course, not a 
question for me to decide. His books afford strong 


NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 203 


internal evidence of having been written to himself 
and his particular friends alone. 

There has long existed in literature a fatal and un- 
founded prejudice, which it will be the office of this 
age to overthrow—the idea that the mere bulk of a 
work must enter largely into our estimate of its 
merit. I do not suppose even the weakest of the 
Quarterly reviewers weak enough to maintain that 
in a book’s size or mass, abstractly considered, there 
is anything which especially calls for our admiration. 
A mountain, simply through the sensation of physical 
magnitude which it conveys, does indeed, affect 
us with a sense of the sublime, but we cannot admit 
any such influence in the contemplation even of 
‘“The Columbiad.’” The Quarterlies themselves 
will not admit it. And yet, what else are we to 
understand by their continual prating about “‘sus- 
tained effort?’ Granted that this sustained effort 
has accomplished an epic—let us then admire the 
effort, (if this be a thing admirable,) but certainly 
not the epic on the effort’s account. Common sense, 
in the time to come, may possibly insist upon 
measuring a work of art rather by the object it ful- 
fils, by the impression it makes, than by the time it 
took to fulfil the object, or by the extent of “‘sus- 
tained effort’’ which became necessary to produce 
‘the impression. The fact is, that perseverance is 
‘one thing and genius quite another; nor can all the 
transcendentalists in Heathendom confound them. 





The pieces in the volumes entitled ‘‘Twice-Told 
Tales,” are now in their third republication, and, of 
course, are thrice-told. Moreover, they are by no 
means all tales, either in the ordinary or in the 
legitimate understanding of the term. Many of 
them are pure essays; for example, ‘‘Sights from a 


294 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Steeple,” ‘‘Sunday at Home,’ ‘“‘Little Annie’s 
Ramble,” ‘‘A Rill from the Town Pump,” ‘The 
Toll-Gatherer’s Day,” ‘‘The Haunted Mind,” ‘‘The 
Sister Years,’ ‘‘Snow-Flakes,”’ ‘‘Night Sketches,” 
and ‘‘Foot-Prints on the Sea-Shore.” I mention 
these matters chiefly on account of their discrepancy 
with that marked precision and finish by which the 
body of the work is distinguished. 

Of the Essays just named, I must be content to 
speak in brief. They are each and all beautiful, 
without being characterized by the polish and 
adaptation so visible in the tales proper. A painter 
would at once note their leading or predominant. 
feature, and style it repose. There is no attempt 
at effect. All is quiet, thoughtful, subdued. Yet 
this repose may exist simultaneously with high 
originality of thought; and Mr. Hawthorne has 
demonstrated the fact. At every turn we meet 
with novel combinations; yet these combinations 
never surpass the limits of the quiet. We are 
soothed as we read; and with all is a calm astonish- 
ment that ideas so apparently obvious have never 
occurred or been presented to us before. Herein 
our author differs materially from Lamb or Hunt 
or Hazlitt—who, with vivid originality of manner 
and expression, have less of the true novelty of 
thought than is generally supposed, and whose 
originality, at best, has an uneasy and meretricious 
quaintness, replete with startling effects unfounded 
in nature, and inducing trains of reflection which 
lead to no satisfactory result. The Essays of 
Hawthorne have much of the character of Irving, 
with more of originality, and less of finish; while, 
compared with the Spectator, they have a vast 
superiority at all points. The Spectator, Mr. 
Irving, and Hawthorne have in common that 


NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 20% 


tranquil and subdued manner which I have chosen 
to denominate repose; but, in the case of the two 
former, this repose is attained rather by the absence 
of novel combination, or of originality, than other- 
wise, and consists chiefly in the calm, quiet, unosten- 
tatious expression of commonplace thoughts, in an 
unambitious, unadulterated Saxon. In them, by 
strong effort, we are made to conceive the absence of 
all. In the essays before me the absence of effort 
«8 too obvious to be mistaken, and a strong under- 
current of suggestion runs continuously beneath the 
upper stream of the tranquil thesis. In short, these 
effusions of Mr. Hawthorne are the product of a 
truly imaginative intellect, restrained, and in some 
measure repressed, by fastidiousness of taste, by 
constitutional melancholy, and by indolence. 

But it is of his tales that I desire principally to 
speak. The tale proper, in my opinion, affords 
unquestionably the fairest field for the exercise of 
the loftiest talent, which can be afforded by the 
wide domains of mere prose. Were I bidden to say 
how the highest genius could be most advantageously 
employed for the best display of its own powers, 
I should answer, without hesitation—in the com- 
position of a rhymed poem, not to exceed in length 
what might be perused in an hour. Within this 
limit alone can the highest order of true poetry 
exist. I need only here say, upon this topic, that, 
in almost all classes of composition, jthe unity of 
effect or impression is a point of the greatest impor- 
tance. It is clear, moreover, that this unity can- 
not be thoroughly preserved in productions whose 
perusal cannot be completed at one sitting. We 
may continue the reading of a prose composition, 
from the very nature of prose itself, much longer 
than we can persevere, to any good purpose, in the 


296 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


perusal of a poem.- This latter, if truly fulfilling 
the demands of the poetic sentiment, induces an exal- 
tation of the soul which cannot be long sustained. 
All high excitements are necessarily transient. 
Thus’ a long poem is a paradox. And, without 
unity of impression, the deepest effects cannot be 
brought about. Epics were the offspring of an 
imperfect sense of Art, and their reign is no more. 
A poem too brief may produce a vivid, but never an 
intense or enduring impression. Without a certain 
continuity of effort—without a certain duration 
of repetition or purpose—the soul is never deeply 
moved. There must be the dropping of the water 
upon the rock. De Béranger has wrought brilliant 
things—pungent and _ spirit-stirring—but, like all 
immassive bodies, they lack momentum, and thus 
fail to satisfy the poetic Sentiment. ‘They sparkle 
and excite, but, from want of continuity, fail deeply | 
to impress. Extreme brevity will degenerate into 
epigrammatism; but the sin of extreme length is 
more unpardonable. In medio tutissimus ibis. 

Were I called upon, however, to designate that 
class of composition which, next to such a poem as I 
have suggested, should best fulfil the demands of 
high genius—should offer it the most advantageous 
field of exertion—I should unhesitatingly speak of 
the prose tale as Mr. Hawthorne has here exem- 
plified it. I allude to the short prose narrative, 
requiring from a half-hour to one or two hours in its 
perusal. The ordinary novel is objectionable, from 
its length, for reasons already stated in substance. 
As it cannot be read at one sitting, it deprives 
itself, of course, of the immense force derivable from to- 
tality. Worldly interests intervening during the pauses 
of perusal, modify, annul, or counteract, in a greater 
or less degree, the impressions of the book. But 


NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 207 


simple cessation in reading would, of itself, be 
sufficient to destroy the true unity. In the brief 
tale, however, the author is enabled to carry out the 
fulness of his intention, be it what it may. During 
the hour of perusal the soul of the reader is at the 
writer's control. There are no external or ex- 
trinsic influences—resulting from weariness or 
interruption. 

A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale. 
If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accom- 
modate his incidents; but having conceived, with 
deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to 
be wrought out, he then invents such incidents— 
he then combines such events as may best aid him 
in establishing this preconceived effect. If his 
very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing 
of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In 
the whole composition there should be no word 
written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is 
not to the one pre-established design. And by 
such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at 
length painted which leaves in the mind of him who 
contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the 
fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale has been 
presented unblemished, because undisturbed; and 
this is an end unattainable by the novel. Undue 
brevity is just as exceptionable here as in the poem; 
but undue length is yet more to be avoided. 

We have said that the tale has a point of superi- 
ority even over the poem. In fact, while the rhythm 
of this latter is an essential aid in the development 
of the poem’s highest idea—the idea of the Beauti- 
' ful—the artificialities of this rhythm are an in- 
separable bar to the development of all points of 
thought or expression which have their basis in 
Truth. But Truth is often, and in very great degree, 


298 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


the aim of the tale. Some of the finest tales are tales 
of ratiocination. Thus the field of this species of 
composition, if not in so elevated a region on the 
mountain of Mind, is a table-land of far vaster ex- 
tent than the domain of the mere poem. Its prod- 
ucts are never so rich, but infinitely more numer- 
ous, and more appreciable by the mass of mankind. 
The writer of the prose tale, in short, may bring to 
his theme a vast variety of modes or inflections of 
thought and expression—(the ratiocinative, for 
example, the sarcastic or the humorous) which are 
not only antagonistical to the nature of the poem, 
but absolutely forbidden by one of its most peculiar — 
and indispensable adjuncts; we allude, of course, to 
rhythm. It may be added, here, par parenthése, 
that the author who aims at the purely beautiful in 
a prose tale is laboring at a great disadvantage. 
For Beauty can be better treated in the poem. 
Not so with terror, or passion, or horror, or a multi- 
tude of such other points. And here it will be seen 
how full of prejudice are the usual animadversions 
against those tales of effect, many fine examples of 
which were found in the earlier numbers of Black- 
wood. ‘The impressions produced were wrought in 
a legitimate sphere of action, and constituted a 
legitimate although sometimes an exaggerated in- 
terest. They were relished by every man of genius: 
although there were found many men of genius who 
condemned them without just ground. The true 
critic will but demand that the design intended be 
accomplished, to the fullest extent, by means most 
advantageously applicable. 

We have very few American tales of real merit— 
we may say, indeed, none, with the exception of 
“The Tales of a Traveller” of Washington Irving, 
and these ‘‘Twice-Told Tales” of Mr. Hawthorne. 


NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 299 


Some of the pieces of Mr. John Neal abound in vigor 
and originality; but in general, his compositions of 
this class are excessively diffuse, extravagant, and 
indicative of an imperfect sentiment of Art. Articles 
at random are, now and then, met with in our 
periodicals which might be advantageously com- 
pared with the best effusions of the British Maga- 
zines; but, upon the whole, we are far behind our 
progenitors in this department of literature. 

Of Mr. Hawthorne’s Tales we would say, emphati- 
cally, that they belong to the highest region of Art 
—an Art subservient to genius of a very lofty order. 
We had supposed, with good reason for so supposing, 
that he had been thrust into his present position 
by one of the impudent cliques which beset our 
literature, and whose pretensions it is our full 
purpose to expose at the earliest opportunity; but 
we have been most agreeably mistaken. We know 
of few compositions which the critic can more 
honestly commend than these ‘‘Twice-Told Tales.”’ 
As Americans, we feel proud of the book. 

Mr. Hawthorne’s distinctive trait is invention, 
creation, imagination, originality—a trait which, 
in the literature of fiction, is positively worth all 
the rest. But the nature of the originality, so far 
as regards its manifestation in letters, is but imper- 
fectly understood. The inventive or original mind 
as frequently displays itself in novelty of tone as in 
novelty of matter. Mr. Hawthorne is original in 
all points. 

It would be a matter of some difficulty to designate 
the best of these tales; we repeat that, without 
exception, they are beautiful. ‘‘Wakefield” is 
remarkable for the skill with which an old idea— 
a well-known incident—is worked up or discussed. 
A man of whims conceives the purpose of quitting 


300 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


his wife and residing incognito, for twenty years in 
her immediate neighborhood. Something of this 
kind actually happened in London. The force of 
Mr. Hawthorne’s tale lies in the analysis of the 
motives which must or might have impelled the 
husband to such folly, in the first instance, with 
the possible causes of his perseverance. Upon this 
thesis a sketch of singular power has been con- 
structed. ‘‘The Wedding Knell” is full of the 
boldest imagination—an imagination fully con- 
trolled by taste. The most captious critic could 
find no flaw in this production. ‘‘The Minister’s 
Black Veil’”’ is a masterly composition of which the. 
sole defect is that to the rabble its exquisite skill 
will be caviare. The obvious meaning of this article 
will be found to smother its insinuated one. The 
moral put into the mouth of the dying minister will 
be supposed to convey the true import of the narra- 
tive; and that a crime of dark dye, (having reference 
to the ‘‘young lady’’) has been committed, is a 
point which only minds congenial with that of the 
author will perceive. ‘‘Mr. Higginbotham’s Catas- 
trophe” is vividly original and managed most 
dexterously. ‘‘Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” is ex- 
ceedingly well imagined, and excuted with surpassing 
ability. The artist breathes in every line of it. 
‘The White Old Maid” is objectionable, even more. 
than the ‘‘Minister’s Black Veil,” on the score of its 
mysticism. Even with the thoughtful and analytic, 
there will be much trouble in penetrating its entire 
import. 

“The Hollow of the Three Hills” we would quote 
in full, had we space;-—not as evincing higher talent 
than any of the other pieces, but as affording an 
excellent example of the author’s peculiar ability. 
The subject is commonplace. A witch subjects the 


NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 301 


Distant and the Past to the view of a mourner. 
It has been the fashion to describe, in such cases, 
a mirror in which the images of the absent appear; 
or a cloud of smoke is made to arise, and thence 
the figures are gradually unfolded. Mr. Hawthorne 
has wonderfully heightened his effect by making 
the ear, in place of the eye, the medium by which 
the fantasy is conveyed. The head of the mourner 
is enveloped in the cloak of the witch, and within 
its magic folds there arise sounds which have an 
all-sufficient intelligence. Throughout this article 
also, the artist is conspicuous—not more in positive 
than in negative merits. Not only is all done that 
should be done, but (what perhaps is an end with 
more difficulty attained) there is nothing done which 
should not be. Every word fells, and there is not 
a word which does no? tell. 

In ‘‘Howe’s Masquerade” we observe something 
which resembles a plagiarism—but which may be 
a very flattering coincidence of thought. We quote 
the passage in question. 


With a dark flush of wrath upon his brow they saw the 
general draw his sword and advance to meet the figure in the 
cloak before the latter had stepped one pace upon the floor. 
“Villain, unmuffle yourself,” cried he, “ you pass no farther!’’ 
The figure, without blenching a hair’s breadth from the 
sword which was pointed at his breast, made a solemn pause, 
and lowered the cape of the cloak from his face, yet not 
sufficiently for the spectators to catch a glimpse of it. 
But Sir William Howe had evidently seen enough. The 
sternness of his countenance gave place to a look of wild 
amazement, if not horror, while he recoiled several steps 
from the figure, and let fall his sword upon the floor.—See 
VOL. 2,)D,'20, | 


The idea here is, that the figure in the cloak is 
the phantom or reduplication of Sir William Howe; 
but in an article called ‘‘ William Wilson,” one of 


302 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


> 


the ‘‘Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque,” we 
have not only the same idea, but the same idea simi- 
larly presented in several respects. We quote 
two paragraphs, which our readers may compare 
with what has been already given. We have itali- 
cized, above, the immediate particulars of resem- 
blance. 


The brief moment in which I averted my eyes had been 
sufficient to produce, apparently, a material change in the 
arrangement at the upper or farther end of the room. 
A large mirror, it appeared to me, now stood where none 
had been perceptible before; and as I stepped up to it in 
extremity of terror, mine own image, but with features all 
pale and dabbled in blood, advanced with a feeble and 
tottering gait to meet me. Thus it appeared IJ say, but 
was not. It was Wilson, who then stood before me in the 
agonies of dissolution. Not a line in all the marked and 
singular lineaments of that face which was not even identi- 
cally mine own. His mask and cloak lay where he had 
thrown them, upon the floor. Vol. 2, p. 336. 


Here, it will be observed that, not only are the 
two general conceptions identical, but there are 
various points of similarity. In each case the figure 
seen is the wraith or duplication of the beholder. 
In each case the scene is a masquerade. In each 
case the figure is cloaked. In each, there is a quarrel 
—that is to say, angry words pass between the 
parties. In each the beholder is enraged. In each 
the cloak and sword fall upon the floor. The 
“‘villain, unmuffle yourself,” of Mr. H. is precisely 
paralleled by a passage at page 56, of ‘‘ William 
Wilson.” 

I must hasten to conclude this paper with a 
summary of Mr. Hawthorne’s merits and demerits. 

He is peculiar and not original—unless in thost, 
detailed fancies and detached thoughts which hi 


NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 303 


want of general originality will deprive of the appre- 
ciation due to them, in preventing them from ever 
reaching the public eye. He is infinitely too fond 
of allegory, and can never hope for popularity so 
long as he persists in it. This he will not do, for 
allegory is at war with the whole tone of his nature, 
which disports itself never so well as when escaping 
from the mysticism of his Goodman Browns and 
White Old Maids into the hearty, genial, but still 
Indian-summer sunshine of his Wakefields and 
Little Annie’s Rambles. Indeed, is spirit of 
“‘metaphor run-mad”’ is clearly imbibed from the 
phalanx and phalanstery atmosphere in which he 
has been so long struggling for breath. He has not 
half the material for the exclusiveness of authorship 
that he possesses for its universality. He has the 
purest style, the finest taste, the most available 
scholarship, the most delicate humor, the most 
touching pathos, the most radiant imagination, the 
most consummate ingenuity; and with these varied 
good qualities he has done well as a mystic. But 
is there any one of these qualities which should 
prevent his doing doubly as well in a career of 
honest, upright, sensible, prehensible and compre- 
hensible things? Let him mend his pen, get a 
bottle of visible ink, come out from the Old Manse, 
cut Mr. Alcott, hang (if possible) the editor of ‘‘The 
Dial,’ and throw out of the window to the pigs 
all his odd numbers of ‘“‘The North American 
Review.” 


304 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


ELIZABETH FRIEZE ELLETT 


® RS. ELLETT, or ELLET, has been long 
# before the public as an author. Having 

j Je. contributed largely to the newspapers 
and other periodicals in her youth, she first made 
her débfit on a more comprehensive scale, as the 
writer of “‘Teresa Contarini,’’ a five-act tragedy, 
which had considerable merit, but was withdrawn 
after its first night of representation at the Park. 
This occurred at some period previous to the year 
1834; the precise date I am unable to remember. 
The ill success of the play had little effect in repress- 
ing the ardor of the poetess, who has since furnished 
numerous papers to the Magazines. Her articles - 
are, for the most part, in the rzfacimento way, and, 
although no doubt composed in good faith, have 
the disadvantage of looking as if hashed up for just 
so much money as they will bring. The charge of 
wholesale plagiarism which has been adduced against 
Mrs. Ellett, I confess that I have not felt sufficient 
interest in her works, to investigate—and am there- 
fore bound to believe it unfounded. In person, 
short and much inclined to embonpoint. 





AMELIA WELBY 308 


AMELIA WELBY 


RS. AMELIA WELBY has nearly all 
i the imagination of Maria del Occidente, 
with a more refined taste; and nearly 
all the passion of Mrs. Norton, with a nicer ear, and 
(what is surprising) equal art. Very few American 
poets are at all comparable with her in the true 
poetic qualities. As for our poetesses (an absurd 
but necessary word), few of them approach her. 
With some modifications, this little poem would 
do honor to any one living or dead: 


The moon within our casement beams, 
Our blue-eyed babe hath dropped to sleep, 
And I have left it to its dreams 
Amid the shadows deep, 
To muse beside the silver tide 
Whose waves are rippling at thy side. 


It is a still and lovely spot 

Where they have laid thee down to rests 
The white rose and forget-me-not 

Bloom sweetly on thy breast, 
And birds and streams with liquid lull 
Have made the stillness beautiful. 


And softly thro’ the forest bars 
Light lovely shapes, on glossy plumes, 
Float ever in, like winged stars, 
Amid the purpling glooms: 
Their sweet songs, borne from tree to tree, 
Thrill the light leaves with melody. 
NOLV--20 


306 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Alas! the very path I trace, 
In happier hours thy footsteps made3 
This spot was once thy resting-place; 
Within the silent shade 
Thy white hand trained the fragrant bough 
That drops its blossoms o’er me now. 


*Twas here at eve we used to rove; 
’Twas here I breathed my whispered vows, 
And sealed them on thy lips, my love, 
Beneath the apple-boughs. 
Our hearts had melted into one, 
But Death undid what Love had done, 


Alas! too deep a weight of thought 
Had fill’d thy heart in youth’s sweet hour3 
It seem’d with love and bliss o’erfraught; 
As fleeting passion-flower 
Unfolding ’neath a southern sky, 
To blossom soon and soon to die, 


Yet in these calm and blooming bowers, 
I seem to see thee still, 

Thy breath seems floating o’er the flowers, 
Thy whisper on the hill; 

The clear faint star-light and the sea 

Are whispering to my heart of thee. 


No more thy smiles my heart rejoice— 
Yet still I start to meet thine eye, 

And call upon the low sweet voice 
That gives me no reply— 

And list within my silent door 

For the light feet that come no more, 


In a critical mood I would speak of these stanzas 
thus:—The subject has nothing of originality:— 
A widower muses by the grave of his wife. Here 
then is a great demerit; for originality of theme, if 
not absolutely first sought, should be sought among 
the first. Nothing is more clear than this proposi- 
tion—although denied by the chlorine critics (the 


AMELIA WELBY 304 


grass-green). The desire of the new is an element 
of the soul. The most exquisite pleasures grow 
dull in repetition. A strain of music enchants. 
Heard a second time it pleases. Heard a tenth, 
it does not displease. We hear it a twentieth, and 
ask ourselves why we admired. At the fiftieth it 
induces ennui—at the hundredth, disgust. 

Mrs. Welby’s theme is, therefore, radically faulty 
so far as originality is concerned;—but of common 
themes, it is one of the very best among the class 
passionate. ‘True passion is prosaic—homely. Any 
strong mental emotion stimulates all the mental 
faculties; thus grief the imagination :—but in propor- 
tion as the effect is strengthened, the cause surceases. 
The excited fancy triumphs—the grief is subdued— 
chastened—is no longer grief. In this mood we are 
poetic, and it is clear that a poem now written will 
be poetic in the exact ratio of its dispassion. A 
passionate poem is a contradiction in terms. When 
I say, then, that Mrs. Welby’s stanzas are good 
among the class passionate (using the term com- 
monly and falsely applied), I mean that her tone is 
properly subdued, and is not so much the tone of 
passion, as of a gentle and melancholy regret, inter- 
woven with a pleasant sense of the natural loveliness 
surrounding the lost in the tomb, and a memory 
of her human beauty while alive.—Elegiac poems 
should either assume this character, or dwell purely 
on the beauty (moral or physical) of the departed— 
or, better still, utter the notes of triumph. I have 
endeavored to carry out this latter idea in some 
verses which I have called ‘‘Lenore.”’ 

Those who object to the proposition—that poetry 
and passion are discordant—would cite Mrs. Welby’s 
poem as an instance of a passionate one. It 1s 
precisely similar to the hundred others which have 


308 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


been cited for like purpose. But it is not passionate; 
and for this reason (with others having regard to 
her fine genius) it 2s poetical. The critics upon 
this topic display an amusing zgnoratio elencht. 

Dismissing originality and tone, I pass to the 
general handling, than which nothing could be more 
pure, more natural, or more judicious. The perfect 
keeping of the various points is admirable—and the 
result is entire unity of impression, or effect. The 
time, a moonlight night; the locality of the grave; 
the passing thither from the cottage, and the con- 
clusion of the theme witn the return to ‘“‘the silent 
door’’; the babe left, meanwhile, ‘‘to its dreams”’; 
the ‘‘white rose and forget-me-not”’ upon the breast 
of the entombed; the ‘“‘birds and streams, with 
liquid lull, that make the stillness beautiful’’; the 
birds whose songs “‘thrill the light leaves with 
melody’’;—all these are appropriate and lovely 
conceptions:—only quite wunoriginal;—and (be it 
observed), the higher order of genius should, and 
will combine the o1iginal with that which is natural 
—not in the vulgar sense, (ordinary)—but in the 
artistic sense, which has reference to the general 
intention of Nature—We have this combination 
well effected in the lines: 


And softly through the forest bars 
Light lovely shapes, on glossy plumes, 
Float ever in, like winged stars, 
Amid the purpling glooms— 


which are, unquestionably, the finest in the poem. 
The reflections suggested by the scene—com- 
mencing: 


Alas! the very path I trace, 


are, also, something more than merely natural, and 


AMELIA WELBY 309 


are richly ideal; especially the cause assigned for 
the early death; and ‘‘the fragrant bough”’ 


That drops its blossoms o’er me now. 


The two concluding stanzas are remarkable 
examples of common fancies rejuvenated, and 
(therealized by grace of expression, and melody of 
rhythm. 

The ‘“‘light lovely shapes’’ in the third stanza 
(however beautiful in themselves), are defective, 
when viewed in reference to the ‘‘birds” of the 
stanza preceding. The topic ‘“‘birds” is dismissed 
in the one paragraph, to be resumed in the other. 

‘‘Drops,”’ in the last line of the fourth stanza, is 
improperly used in an active sense. To drop is a 
neuter verb. An apple drops; we let the apple fall. 

The repetition (‘‘seemed,”’ ‘‘seem,” ‘‘seems,’’) in 
the sixth and seventh stanzas, is ungraceful; so 
also that of ‘‘heart,” in the last line of the seventh, 
and the first of the eighth. The words ‘‘breathed”’ 
and ‘‘whispered,’’ in the second line of the fifth 
stanza, have a force too nearly identical. ‘‘Neath,” 
just below, is an awkward contraction. All con- 
tractions are awkward. It is no paradox, that the 
more prosaic the construction of verse, the better. 
Inversions should be dismissed. The most forcible 
lines are the most direct. Mrs. Welby owes three- 
fourths of her power (so far as style is concerned), 
to her freedom from these vulgar, and particularly 
English errors—elision and inversion. O’er is, how- 
ever, too often used by her in place of over, and 
‘twas for it was. We see instances here. The only 
inversions, strictly speaking, are 


The moon within our casement beams, 


_ and—‘‘ Amid the shadows deep.” 


310 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


The versification throughout, is unusually good. 
Nothing can excel 


And birds and streams with liquid lull 
Have made the stillness beautiful.... 


And sealed them on thy lips, my love, 
Beneath the apple-boughs.... 


or the whole of the concluding stanza, if we leave 
out of view the unpleasant repetition of ‘‘And,” 
at the commencement of the third and fifth lines, 
“Thy white hand trained”’ (see stanza the fourth) 
involves four consonants, that unite with difficulty 
—ndtr—and the harshness is rendered moreapparent, 
by the employment of the spondee, ‘‘hand trained,” 
in place of aniambus. ‘‘Melody,’’ is a feeble termin- 
ation of the third stanza’s last line. The syllable 
dy is not full enough to sustain the rhyme. Aill 
these endings, liberty, property, happily, and the | 
like, however justified by authority, are grossly 
objectionable. Upon the whole, there are some 
poets in America (Bryant and Sprague, for example), 
who equal Mrs. Welby in the negative merits of 
that limited versification which they chiefly affect 
—the iambic pentameter—but none equal her in 
the richer and positive merits of rhythmical variety, 
conception—invention. They, in the old routine, 
rarely err. She often surprises, and always delights, 
by novel, rich and accurate combination of the 
ancient musical expressions. 


BAYARD TAYLOR 312 


BAYARD TAYLOR 


invidious notice of BAYARD TayLor’s ‘‘ Rhymes 
of Travel.’’ What makes the matter worse, 
the critique is from the pen of one who, although 
undeservedly, holds, himself, some position as a 
poet :—and what makes the matter worst, the attack 
is anonymous, and (while ostensibly commending) 
most zealously endeavors to damn the young writer 
“with faint praise.’ In his whole life, the author 
of the criticism never published a poem, long or 
short, which could compare, either in the higher 
merits, or in the minor morals of the Muse, with 
the worst of Mr. Taylor’s compositions. 
Observe the generalizing, disingenuous, patron- 
izing tone: 


| BLUSH to see, in the Literary World, an 


It is the empty charlatan, to whom all things are alike 
impossible, who attempts everything. He can do one 
thing as well as another; for he can really do nothing...... 
Mr. Taylor’s volume, as we have intimated, is an advance 
upon his previous publication. We could have wished, 
indeed, something more of restraint in the rhetoric, but, 
Se wC., CC. 


The concluding sentence, here, is an excellent 
example of one of the most ingeniously malignant 
of critical ruses—that of condemning an author, 
in especial, for what the world, in general feel to 
be his principal merit. In fact, the “rhetoric’’ of 
Mr. Taylor, in the sense intended by the critic, 1s 
Mr. Taylor’s distinguishing excellence. Heis, unques- 
tionably, the most terse, glowing, and vigorous of 


312 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


all our poets, young or old—in point, I mean, of 
expression. His sonorous, well-balanced rhythm 
puts me often in mind of Campbell (in spite of our 
anonymous friend’s zmplied sneer at “mere jingling 
of rhymes, brilliant and successful for the moment,”’) 
and his rhetoric in general is of the highest order :— 
By “rhetoric” I intend the mode generally in which 
Thought is presented. Where shall we find more 
magnificent passages than these? 


First queenly Asia, from the fallen thrones 
Of twice three thousand years, 

Came with the wo a grieving Goddess owns 
Who longs for mortal tears, 

The dust of ruin to her mantle clung 
And dimmed her crown of gold, 

While the majestic sorrows of her tongue 
From Tyre to Indus rolled. 


Mourn with me, sisters, in my realm of wo 
Whose only glory streams 

From tts lost childhood like the Arctic glow 
Whach sunless winter dreams, 

In the red desert moulders Babylon 
And the wild serpent’s hiss 

Echoes in Petra’s palaces of stone 
And waste Persepolis. 


Then from her seat, amid the palms embowered 
That shade the Lion-land, 

Swart Africa in dusky aspect towered, 
The fetters on her hand. 

Backward she saw, from out the drear eclipse, 
The mighty Theban years, 

And the deep anguish of her mournful lips 
Interpreted her tears. 


I copy these passages first, because the critic in 
question has copied them, without the slightest 
appreciation of their grandeur—for they are grand; 


BAYARD TAYLOR 313 


and secondly, to put the question of ‘‘rhetoric’”’ at 
rest. No artist who reads them will deny that they 
are the perfection of skill in their way. But thirdly, 
I wish to call attention to the glowing imagination 
evinced in the lines italicized. My very soul revolts 
at such efforts (as the one I refer to,) to depreciate 
such poems as Mr. Taylor’s. Js there no honor—no 
Chivalry left in the land? Are our most deserving 
writers to be forever sneered down, or hooted down, 
or damned down with faint praise, by a set of men 
who possess little other ability than that which 
assures temporary success to them, in common with 
Swaim’s Panacea or Morrison’s pills? The fact is, 
some person should write, at once, a Magazine 
paper exposing—ruthlessly exposing, the dessous 
de cartes of our literary affairs. He should show 
how and why it is that the ubiquitous quack in 
letters can always “succeed,” while gentus, (which 
implies self-respect, with a scorn of creeping and 
crawling,) must inevitably succumb. He should 
point out the “easy arts’’ by which any one, base 
enough to do it, can get himself placed at the very 
head of American Letters by an article in that 
magnanimous journal, “The Review.” He 
should explain, too, how readily the same work 
can be induced (as in the case of Simms,) to vilify, 
and vilify personally any one not a Northerner, for 
a trifling ‘“‘consideration.”’ In fact, our criticism 
needs a thorough regeneration, and must have it. 





314 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


HENRY B. HIRST 


R. HENRY B. HIRST, of Philadelphia, 
M has, undoubtedly, some merit as a poet. 
His sense of beauty is keen, although 
indiscriminative; and his versification would be 
unusually effective but for the spirit of hyperism, 
or exaggeration, which seems to be the ruling feature 
of the man. He is always sure to overdo a good 
thing; and, in especial, he insists upon rhythmical 
effects until they cease to have any effect at all— 
or until they give to his compositions an air of mere 
oddity. His principal defect, however, is a want 
of constructive ability;—he can never put together 
a story intelligibly. His chief sin is imitativeness. 
He never writes anything which does not immedi- 
ately put us in mind of something that we have 
seen better written before. Not to do him injustice, 
however, I here quote two stanzas from a little 
poem of his, called “The Owl.” The passages 
italicized are highly imaginative: 


When twilight fades and evening falls 
Alike on tree and tower, 
And Silence, like a pensive matd, 
Walks round each slumbering bower: 
When fragrant flowerets fold their leaves, 
And all is still in sleep, 
The horned owl on moonlit wing 
Flues from the donjon keep. 


And he calls aloud—‘“ too-whit! too-whool” 
And the nightingale is still, 

And the pattering step of the hurrying hare 
Is hushed upon the hill; 


HENRY B. HIRST 315 


And he crouches low in the dewy grass 
As the lord of the night goes by, 

Not with a loudy whirring wing 
But like a lady’s sigh. 


No one, save a poet at heart, could have conceived 
these images; and they are embodied with much 
skill. In the ‘‘pattering step,’ &c., we have an 
admirable ‘‘echo of sound to sense,’’ and the title, 
“lord of the night,” applied to the owl, does Mr. 
Hirst infinite credit—zf the idea be original with 
Mr. Hirst. Upon the whole, the poems of this 
author are eloquent (or perhaps elocutionary) 
rather than poetic—but he has poetical merit, 
beyond a doubt—merit which his enemies need 
not attempt to smother by any mere ridicule thrown 
upon the man. 

To my face, and in the presence of my friends, 
Mr. H. has always made a point of praising my own 
poetical efforts; and, for this reason, I should for- 
give him, perhaps, the amiable weakness of abusing 
them anonymously. In a late number of ‘The 
Philadelphia Saturday Courier,” he does me the 
honor of attributing to my pen a ballad called 
“‘Ulalume,” which has been going the rounds of 
the press, sometimes with my name to it; sometimes 
with Mr. Willis’s, and sometimes with no name at 
all. Mr. Hirst insists upon it that J wrote it, and 
it is just possible that he knows more about the 
matter than I do myself. Speaking of a particular 
passage, he says: 


We have spoken of the mystical appearance of Astarte 
as a fine touch of Art. This is borrowed, and from the first 
canto of Hirst’s Endymion—[The reader will observe that 
the anonymous critic has zo personal acquaintance what- 
ever with Mr. Hirst, but takes care to call him “ Hirst” 
simply, just as we say “Homer.”’]—from Hirst’s “ Endy- 


316 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


mion,’’ published years since in ‘The Southern Literary 
Messenger ’”’: 


Slowly Endymion bent, the light Elysian 
Flooding his figure. Kneeling on one knee, 
He loosed his sandals, lea 

And lake and woodland glittering on his vision- 
A fairy landscape, bright and beautiful, 

With Venus at her full. 


Astarte is another name for Venus; and when we remem- 
ber that Diana is about to descend to Endymion—that 
the scene which is about to follow is one of love—that 
Venus is the star of love—and that Hirst, by introducing 
it as he does, shadows out his story exactly as Mr. Poe 
introduces his Astarte—the plagiarism of idea becomes 
evident. 


Now I really feel ashamed to say that, as yet, I 
have not perused ‘‘Endymion’’—for Mr. Hirst will 
retort at once—‘‘That is no fault of mine—you 
should have read it—I gave you a copy—and, » 
besides, you had no business to fall asleep when I 
did you the honor of reading it to you.’”’ Without 
a word of excuse, therefore, I will merely copy the 
passage in “‘Ulalume”’ which the author of ‘‘Endy- 
mion’’ says I purloined from the lines quoted above: 


And now, as the night was senescent 
And star-dials pointed to morn— 
As the star-dials hinted of morn— 

At the end of my path a liquescent 
And nebulous lustre was born, 

Out of which a miraculous crescent 
Arose with a duplicate horn— 

Astarte’s bediamonded crescent, 
Distinct with its duplicate horn. 


Now, I may be permitted to regret—really to 
regret—that I can find no resemblance between the 
two passages in question; for malo cum Platone 


HENRY B. HIRST 317 


errare, @’c., and to be a good imitator of Henry B. 
Hirst, is quite honor enough for me. 

In the meantime, here is a passage from another 
little ballad of mine, called ‘‘Lenore,”’ first published 
in 1830: 


How shall the ritual, then, be read—the requiem how be > 
sung 

By you—by yours, the evil eye—by yours, the slanderous 
tongue 

That did to death the innocence that died, and died so 
young? 


And here is a passage from ‘‘The Penance of 
Roland,” by Henry B. Hirst, published in ‘‘Graham’s 
Magazine” for January, 1848: 


Mine the tongue that wrought this evil—mine the false and 
slanderous tongue 

That done to death the Lady Gwineth—Oh, my soul is 
sadly wrung! 

“Demon! devil,’’ groaned the warrior, “ devil of the evil eye!” 


Now my objection to all this is not that Mr. Hirst 
has appropriated my property—(I am fond of a 
nice phrase)—but that he has not done it so cleverly 
as I could wish. Many a lecture, on literary topics, 
have I given Mr. H.; and I confess that, in general, 
he has adopted my advice so implicitly that his 
poems, upon the whole, are little more than our 
conversations done into verse. 

“Steal, dear Endymion,” I used to say to him— 
“‘for very well do I know you can’t help it; and the 
more you put in your book that is not your own, 
why the better your book will be:—but be cautious 
and steal with an air. In regard to myself—you 
need give yourself no trouble about me. I shall 
always feel honored in being of use to you; and 
provided you purloin my poetry in a reputable 


318 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


manner, you are quite welcome to just as much of it 
as you (who are a very weak little man) can con- 
veniently carry away.” 

So far—let me confess—Mr. Hirst has behaved 
remarkably well in largely availing himself of the 
privilege thus accorded:—but, in the case now at 
issue, he stands in need of some gentle rebuke. I 
do not object to his stealing my verses; but I do 
object to his stealing them in bad grammar. My 
quarrel with him is xot, in short, that he did this 
thing, but that he has went and done did 1t. 


ROBERT WALSH 319 


ROBERT WALSH 


AVING read Mr. Watsn’s ‘‘Didactics,” 
H with much attention and pleasure, I am 

prepared to admit that he is one of the 
finest writers, one of the most accomplished scholars, 
and when not in too great a hurry, one of the most 
accurate thinkers in the country. Yet had I never 
seen this work I should never have entertained these 
opinions. Mr. Walsh has been peculiarly an anony- 
mous writer, and has thus been instrumental in 
cheating himself of a great portion of that literary 
renown which is most unequivocally his due. I 
have been not unfrequenv. v astonished in the perusal 
of this book, at meeting witi: a variety of well known 
and highly esteemed acquaintances, for whose 
paternity I had been accustomed to give credit 
where I now find it should not have been given. 
Among these I may mention in especial the very 
excellent Essay on the acting of Kean, entitled 
“Notices of Kean’s principal performances during 
his first season in Philadelphia,” to be found at page 
146, volumeI. Ihave often thought of the unknown 
author of this Essay, as of one to whom I might 
speak, if occasion should at any time be granted 
me, with a perfect certainty of being understood. 
I have looked to the article itself as to a fair oasis 
in the general blankness and futility of our custom- 
ary theatrical notices. I read it with that thrill 
of pleasure with which I always welcome my own 
long-cherished opinions, when I meet them unex- 
pectedly in the language of another. How abso- 
lute is the necessity now daily growing, of rescuing 
our stage criticism from the control of illiterate 





320 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


mountebanks, and placing it in the hands of gentie- 
men and scholars! 

The paper on Collegiate Education, is much more 
than a sufficient reply to that Essay in the Old 
Bachelor of Mr. Wirt, in which the attempt is made 
to argue down colleges as seminaries for the young. 
Mr. Walsh’s article does not uphold Mr. Barlow’s 
plan of a National University—a plan which is 
assailed by the Attorney General—but comments 
upon some errors in point of fact, and enters into a 
brief but comprehensive examination of the general 
subject. He maintains with undeniable truth, 
that it is illogical to deduce arguments against 
universities which are to exist at the present day, 
from the inconveniences found to be connected with 
institutions formed in the dark ages—institutions 
similar to our own in but few respects, modelled 
upon the principles and prejudices of the times, 
organized with a view to particular ecclesiastical 
purposes, and confined in their operations by an 
infinity of Gothic and perplexing regulations. He 
thinks, (and I believe he thinks with a great majority 
of our well educated fellow citizens,) that in the 
case either of a great national institute or of State 
universities, nearly all the difficulties so much 
insisted upon will prove a series of mere chimeras-— 
that the evils apprehended might be readily obviated, 
and the acknowledged benefits uninterruptedly 
secured. He denies, very justly, the assertion of 
the Old Bachelor—that, in the progress of society, 
funds for collegiate establishments will no doubt 
be accumulated, independently of government, 
when their benefits are evident, and a necessity for 
them felt—and that the rich who have funds will, 
whenever strongly impressed with the necessity 
of so doing, provide, either by associations or other- 


ROBERT WALSH 321 


wise, proper seminaries for the education of their 
children. He shows that these assertions are con- 
tradictory to experience, and more particularly 
to the experience of the State of Virginia, where, 
notwithstanding the extent of private opulence, and 
the disadvantages under which the community so 
long labored from a want of regular and systematic 
instruction, 1t was the government which was finally 
compelled, and not private societies which were 
induced, to provide establishments for effecting 
the great end. He says, (and therein we must all 
fully agree with him,) that Virginia may consider 
herself fortunate in following the example of all 
the enlightened nations of modern times rather 
than in hearkening to the counsels of the Old 
Bachelor. He dissents, (and who would not?) 
from the allegation, that ‘‘the most eminent men 
in Europe, particularly in England, have received 
their education neither at public schools or universi- 
ties,’ and shows that the very reverse may be 
affrmed—that on the continent of Europe by far 
the greater number of its great names have been 
attached to the rolls of its universities—and that in 
England a vast majority of those minds which we 
have reverenced so long—the Bacons, the Newtons, 
the Barrows, the Clarkes, the Spencers, the Miltons, 
the Drydens, the Addisons, the Temples, the Hales, 
the Clarendons, the Mansfields, Chatham, Pit, Fox, 
Wyndham, &c., were educated among the venerable 
cloisters of Oxford or of Cambridge. He cites the 
Oxford Prize Essays, so well known even in America, 
as direct evidence of the energetic ardor in acquiring 
knowledge brought about through the means of 
British Universities, and maintains that ‘‘when 
attention is given to the subsequent public stations 
and labors of most of the writers of these Essays, 
VoL. VY—2z " 


322 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


it will be found that they prove also the ultimate 
practical utility of the literary discipline of the 
yolleges for the students and the nation.” He 
prgues, that were it even true that the greatest 
men have not been educated in public schools, 
the fact would have little to do with the question 
of their efficacy in the instruction of the mass of 
mankind. Great men cannot be created—and are 
usually independent of all particular schemes of 
education. Public seminaries are best adapted 
to the generality of cases. He concludes with 
observing that the course of study pursued at 
English Universities, is more liberal by far than we 
gre willing to suppose it—that it is, demonstrably, 
the best, inasmuch as regards the preference given 
to classical and mathematical knowledge—and that 
upon the whole it would be an easy matter, in 
transferring to America the general principles of 
those institutions, to leave them their obvious errors, 
while we avail ourselves as we best may, of their 
still more obvious virtues and advantages. 

The only paper in the Didactics, to which I have 
any decided objection, is a tolerably long article 
on the subject of Phrenology, entitled ‘‘Memorial 
of the Phrenological Society of to the Honorable 
the Congress of sitting at .’ Considered 
as a specimen of mere burlesque, the Memorial 
is well enough—but I am sorry to see the energies 
bf a scholar and an editor (who should be, if he be 
nc’, a man of metaphysical science,) so wickedly 
employed as in any attempt to throw ridicule upon 
a question, (however much maligned, or however 
apparently ridiculous,) whose merits he has never 
examined, and of whose very nature, history, and 
assumptions, he is most evidently ignorant. Mr. 
Walsh is either ashamed of this article now, or he will 
have plentiful reason to be ashamed of it hereafter. 











CONTENTS OF VOL. VI 


OYE NRG SiR 28) | 00 rah ee el a ALTO eet R33) 
MARGARET MILLER AND LucrRETIA MARIA DAVIDSON... 
OMIGLIAMECLURR Vi CHANNING Vo cis asc es cutie seed tak alen 
RU RILE PA May ATE ACTS lame tie Gate c hele loc ae tate a eal orate 
POT EGET ANINIVA TSE WLS, Blk a Gilets’ eC oc yw tiety cheb aad we 
PCS ISUAR MOREL PATI nl iarar tits !2) 3's %e! aha) og dle! eletelnia elalercva.aie’s 
OR GIS ee VGI RR IS irc Wey sills o dieiciclaieie abshbreia ba; evacevebarahers 
EASIEST IA WB GEG ACT RET Ta ES AIT Nee eae a ae A 
Bere Lire UA THES ie See eles con a's hala ate Belews aie 
PC TAM si DMORE DIMMS". cs a/c cists oblast clete Slade selena 
PME S HAUSE EL LI OWE LE MG alt clea visu alnlly ee wie eie'y sl 
Mr. W. GRISWOLD AND THE POETS.......... Pape eed 
Mr. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER-PLAGIARISTS .......00. 


Mr. LONGFELLOW, Mr-Wius, - AND THE DRAMA.... ¢ e 
LONGFELLOW’ S I ao eoeceeee ° oeseerevee eoeoeee Pia 


Fancy AND IMAGINATION—DRAKE’S Cuter Fay AND 

Moore’s ALCIPHRON........ PSA ALD SLAIN it 
Pe NV IPP AND OTHER IGRITICS) sf sy)e's ade ee Wa Sis 
J. FENIMORE COOPER ....... Rad itaee iota eketalslnigiallav ald) state 
Pee PTH OARRETT ARBRE TT Sig os hisisie tie Sis. 6 ules eevee 
Need ELORN Bie. (d: 5se MUON Es ahais oie ave oleidielecasece ee ale 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. sccccccccccccccccce 








SEBA SMITH 


We few notices we have seen of this 
poem,* speak of it as the production of 
Mrs. Seba Smith. To be sure, gentle- 
men may be behind the scenes, and know more 
about the matter than we do. They may have 
some private reason for understanding that black 
is white—some reason into which we, personally, 
are not initiated. But, to ordinary perception, 
‘‘Powhatan”’ is the composition of Seba Smith, 
Esquire, of Jack Downing memory, and not of his 
wife. Seba Smith is the name upon the title-page; 
and the personal pronoun which supplies the place 
of this well-known prenomen and cognomen in 
the preface, is, we are constrained to say, of the 
masculine gender. ‘‘The author of Powhatan,” 
—thus, for example, runs a portion of the pro- 
legomena—‘‘does not presume to claim for Ms 
production the merit of good and genuine poetry, 
nor does he pretend to assign it a place in the classes 
or forms into which poetry is divided” in all 
_ which, by the way, he is decidedly right. But can 
it be that no gentleman has read even so far as the 
Preface of the book? Can it be that the critics 
have had no curiosity to creep into the adyta—into 
the inner mysteries of this temple? If so, they are 
decidedly right too. 

‘‘Powhatan”’ is handsomely bound. Its printing 
is clear beyond comparison. Its paper is magnifi- 

*Powhatan; a Metrical Romance, in Seven Cantos. By 
Sepa Smitu. New York: Harper and Brothers. 

x 


2 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


cent, and we undertake to say (for we have read it 
through with the greatest attention) that there 
is not a single typographical error in it, from one 
end to the other. Further than this, in the way 
of commendation, no man with both brains and 
conscience should proceed. In truth a more 
absurdly flat affair—for flat is the only epithet 
which applies in this case—was never before paraded 
to the world, with so grotesque an air of bombast 
and assumption. 

To give some idea of the tout ensemble of the book 
—we have first a Dedication to the ‘‘ Young People 
of the United States,” in which Mr. Jack Downing 
lives, in ‘‘the hope that he may do some good in 
his day and generation, by adding something to 
the sources of rational enjoyment and mental 
culture.’ Next, we have a Preface, occupying four 
pages, in which, quoting his publishers, the author 
tells us that poetry is a “‘very great bore, and 
won't sell’—a thing which cannot be denied in 
certain cases, but which Mr. Downing denies in 
his own. ‘“‘It may be true,” he says, ‘‘of endless 
masses of words, that are poured forth from the 
press, under the name of poetry’’—but it is not 
true ‘‘of genuine poetry—of that which is worthy 
of the name’’—in short, we presume he means to 
say it is not in the least little bit true of ‘‘Powha- 
tan’’; with regard to whose merits he wishes to be 
tried, not by the critics (we fear, in fact, that here 
it is the critics who will be tried,) but by the com- 
mon taste of common readers’’—all which ideas are 
common enough, to say no more. 

We have next, a ‘‘Sketch of the Character of 
Powhatan,’”’ which is exceedingly interesting and 
commendable, and which is taken from Burk’s 
“History of Virginia” :—four pages more. Then 


SEBA SMITH 3 


comes a Proem—four pages more—forty-eight lines 
—twelve lines to a page—in which all that we can 
understand, is something about the name of ‘‘Pow- 
hatan”’ 


Descending to a distant age, 
Embodied forth on the deathless page 


of the author—that is to say, of Jack Downing, 
Esquire. We have now one after the other, CANTos 
one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven—each 
subdivided into Parts, by means of Roman numerals 
—some of these Parts comprehending as many 
as six lines—upon the principle, we presume, of 
packing up precious commodities in small bundles. 
The volume then winds up with Notes, in proportion 
of three to one, as regards the amount of text, and 
taken, the most of them, from Burk’s Virginia, as 
before. 

It is very difficult to keep one’s countenance 
when reviewing such a work as this; but we will do 
our best, for the truth’s sake, and put on as serious 
a face as the case will admit. 

The leading fault of ‘‘ Powhatan,’ then, is precisely 
what its author supposes to be its principal merit. 
‘It would be difficult,’’ he says, in that pitiable 
preface, in which he has so exposed himself, ‘‘to 
find a poem that embodies more truly the spirit of 
history, or indeed that follows out more faithfully 
many of its details.” It would, indeed; and we are 
very sorry to say it. The truth is, Mr. Downing 
has never dreamed of any artistic arrangement of 
his facts. He has gone straight forward, like a 
blind horse, and turned neither to the one side nor 
to the other, for fear of stumbling. But he gets 
them all in—every one of them—the facts we 


i EDGAR ALLAN POE 


mean. Powhatan never did anything in his life, 
we are sure, that Mr. Downing has not got in his 
poem. He begins at the beginning, and goes on 
steadily to the end—painting away at his story, 
just, as a sign-painter at a sign; beginning at the 
left hand side of his board, and plastering through 
to the right. But he has omitted one very ingenious 
trick of the sign-painter. He has forgotten to write 
under his portrait—‘‘this 7s a pig,” and thus there 
is some danger of mistaking it for an opossum. 

But we are growing scurrilous, in spite of our 
promise, and must put on a sober visage once more. 
It zs a hard thing, however, when we have to read 
and write about such doggerel as this: 


But bravely to the river’s brink 
I led my warrior train, 

And face to face, each glance they sent, 
We sent it back again. 

Their werowance looked stern at me, 
And I looked stern at him, 

And all my warriors clasped their bows, 
And nerved each heart and limb. 

I raised my heavy war-club high, 
And swung it fiercely round, 

And shook it towards the shallop’s side, 
Then laid it on the ground. 

And then the lighted calumet 
I offered to their view, 

And thrice I drew the sacred smoke, 
And toward the shallop blew, 

And as the curling vapor rose, 
Soft as a spirit prayer, 

I saw the pale-face leader wave 
A white flag in the air. 

Then launching out their painted skiff 
They boldly came to land, 

And spoke us many a kindly word, 
And took us by the hand. 


SEBA SMITH 5 


Presenting rich and shining gifts, 
Of copper, brass, and beads, 

To show that they were men like us, 
And prone to generous deeds. 

We held a long and friendly talk, 
Inquiring whence they came, 

And who the leader of their band 
And what their country’s name, 
And how their mighty shallop moved 

Across the boundless sea, 
And why they touched our great king’s land 
Without his liberty, 


It won’t do. We cannot sing to this tune any 
longer. We greatly prefer, 


John Gilpin was a gentleman 
Of credit and renown, 

A train-band captain eke was he 
Of famous London town. 


Or— 


Old Grimes is dead, that good old man, 
We ne’er shall see him more, 

He used to wear an over-coat 
All buttoned down before— 


or lines to that effect—we wish we could remember 
the words. ‘The part, however, about 


Their werowance look’d stern at me, 
And I looked stern at him— 


is not quite original with Mr. Downing—is it? We 
merely ask for information. Have we not heard 
something about 


An old crow sitting on a hickory limb, 
Who winked at me, and J winked at him. 


6 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


The simple truth is, that Mr. Downing never 
committed a greater mistake in his life than when 
he fancied himself a poet, even in the ninety-ninth 
degree. We doubt whether he could distinctly 
state the difference between an epic and an epigram. 
And it will not do for him to appeal from the critic 
to common readers—because we assure him his book 
is a very uncommon book. We never saw any one 
so uncommonly bad—nor one about whose parturi- 
tion so uncommon a fuss has been made, so little 
to the satisfaction of common sense. Your poem 
is a curiosity, Mr. Jack Downing; your “ Metrical 
Romance” is not worth a single half sheet of the 
paste-board upon which it is printed This is our 
humble and honest opinion; and, although honest 
opinions are not very plentiful just now you can 
have ours at what it is worth. But we wish, before 
parting, to ask you one question. What do you 
mean by that motto from Sir Philip Sidney, upon 
the title-page? ‘“‘He cometh to you with a tale 
that holdeth children from play, and old men from 
the chimney-corner.’”’ What do you mean by it, 
we say. Either you cannot intend to apply it to 
the “tale”? of Powhatan, or else all the ‘‘old men”’ 
in your particular neighborhood must be very old 
men; and all the “little children”’ a set of dunder- 
header little ignoramuses. 


M. MILLER AND L. M. DAVIDSON 7 


MARGARET MILLER AND LUCRETIA 
MARIA DAVIDSON 


HE name of Lucretia Davidson is familiar 
to all readers of poetry. Dying at the early 
age of seventeen, she has been rendered 

famous not less, and certainly not more, by her own 
precocious genius than by three memorable biogra- 
phies—one by President Morse, of the American 
society of Arts, another by Miss Sedgwick, and a 
third by Robert Southey. Mr. Irving had formed 
an acquaintance with some of her relatives, and 
thus, while in Europe, took great interest in all 
that was said or written of his young countrywoman. 
Upon his return to America, he called upon Mrs. 
Davidson, and then, in 1833, first saw the subject 
of the memoir now before us,*—a fairy-like child 
of eleven. Three years afterwards he met with 
her again, and then found her in delicate health. 
Three years having again elapsed, the MSS. which 
form the basis of the present volume, were placed 
in his hands by Mrs. Davidson, as all that remained 
of her daughter. 

Few books have interested us more profoundly. 
Yet the interest does not appertain solely to Mar- 
garet. “In fact the narrative,’ says Mr. Irving, 
“will be found almost as illustrative of the character 
of the mother as of the child; they were singularly 
identified in taste, feeling and pursuits; tenderly 
entwined together by maternal and filial affection, 

* Biography and Poetical Remains of the late Margaret 


Miller Davidson. By Washington Irving. Philadelphia: 
Lea and Blanchard, 


8 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


they Meee an inexpressibly touching grace and 
interest upon each other by this holy relationship, 
and, to my mind it would be marring one of the 
most beautiful and affecting groups in modern 
literature, to sunder them.’’ In these words the 
biographer conveys no more than a just idea of the 
exquisite loveliness of the picture here presented 
to view. 

The MSS. handed Mr. Irving, have been suffered, 
in a great measure, to tell their own thrilling tale. 
There has been no injudicious attempt at mere 
authorship. The compiler has confined himself 
to chronological arrangement of his memoranda, 
and to such simple and natural comments as serve 
to bind rather than to illustrate where no illustration 
was needed—These memoranda consist of relations 
by Mrs. Davidson of the infantine peculiarities 
of her daughter, and of her habits and general 
thoughts in more matured life, intermingled with 
letters from the young poetess to intimate friends, 
There is also a letter from the bereaved mother to 
Miss Sedgwick, detailing the last moments of the 
child—a letter so full of all potent nature, so full 
of minute beauty, and truth and pathos, that to 
read it without tears would be to prove one’s self 
less than human. 

The “Poetical Remains” of this young creature, 
who perished (of consumption) in her sixteenth 
year, occupy about two hundred pages of a some- 
what closely printed octavo. The longest poem 
is called “ Lenore,’’ and consists of some two thou- 
sand lines, varying in metre from the ordinary octo- 
syllabic, to the four-footed, or twelve-syllabled 
iambic. The story, which is a romantic love-tale, 
not ill-conceived in its incidents, is told with a skill 
which might put more practised bards to the blush, 


M. MILLER AND L. M. DAVIDSON 9 


and with occasional bursts of the truest poetic fire. 
But although as indicative of her future power, it 
is the most important, as it is the longest of her 
productions, yet, as a whole, it is not equal to some 
of her shorter compositions. It was written not 
long before her death, at the age of fifteen, and 
(as we glean from the biography) after patient 
reflection, with much care, and with a high resolve 
to do something for fame. As the work of so mere 
a child, it is unquestionably wonderful. Its length, 
viewed in connexion with its keeping, its unity, 
its adaptation, and completeness, will impress the 
metaphysician most forcibly, when surveying the 
capacities of its author. Powers are here brought 
into play which are the last to be matured. For 
fancy we might have looked, and for the lower 
evidences of skill in a perfect versification and the 
like, but hardly for what we see in Lenore. 

Yet remarkable as this production is, from the 
pen of a girl of fifteen, it is by no means so incom- 
prehensible as are some of the shorter pieces. We 
have known instances—rarely, to be sure—but still 
we have known instances when finer poems in every 
respect than Lenore have been written by children 
of as immature age—but we look around us in vain 
for anything composed at eight years, which can 
bear comparison with the lines subjoined: 


TO MAMMA. 


Farewell, dear mother, for a while 

I must resign my plaintive smile; 
May angels watch thy couch of wo, 
And joys unceasing round thee flow, 


May the almighty Father spread 

His sheltering wings above thy head. 

It is not long that we must part, 

Then cheer thy downcast drooping heart, 


10 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Remember, oh! remember me, 
Unceasing is my love for thee! 

When death shall sever earthly ties, 
When thy loved form all senseless lies, 


Oh! that my form with thine could flee, 
And roam through wide eternity; 

Could tread with thee the courts of heaven, 
And count the brilliant stars of even, 


Nor are these stanzas, written at ten, in any 
degree less remarkable— 


MY NATIVE LAKE, 


Thy verdan banks, thy lucid stream, 
Lit by the sun’s resplendent beam, 
Reflect each bending tree so light 
Upon thy bounding bosom bright. 
Could I but see thee once again, 

My own, my beautiful Champlain! 


The little isles that deck thy breast, 

And calmly on thy bosom rest, 

How often, in my childish glee, 

I’ve sported round them, bright and free! 
Could I but see thee once again, 

My own, my beautiful Champlain! 


How oft I’ve watch’d the fresh’ning shower 
Bending the summer tree and flower, 

And felt my little heart beat high 

As the bright rainbow graced the sky. 
Could I but see thee once again, 

My own, my beautiful Champlain! 


And shall I never see thee more, 

My native lake, my much-loved shore 
And must I bid a long adieu, 

My dear, my infant home, to you? 
Shall I not see thee once again, 

My own, my beautiful Champlain? 


M. MILLER AND L. M. DAVIDSON © rr 


In the way of criticism upon these extraordinary 
compositions, Mr. Irving has attempted little, and, 
in general, he seems more affected by the loveliness 
and the purity of the child than even by the genius 
she has evinced—however highly he may have 
estimated this latter. In respect, however, to a 
poem entitled “My Sister Lucretia,”—he thus 
speaks—“ We have said that the example of her 
sister Lucretia was incessantly before her, and no 
better proof can be given of it than in the following 
lines, which breathe the heavenly aspirations of 
her pure young spirit, 7” strains to us quite unearthly. 
We may have read poetry more artificially perfect in 
tts structure, but never any more truly divine in tis 
inspiration.” Thenature of inspiration is disputable 
—and we will not pretend to assert that Mr. Irving 
is in the wrong. His words, however, in their 
hyperbole, do wrong to his subject, and would be 
hyperbole still, if applied to the most exalted poets 
of all time. 

The analogies of Nature are universal; and just 
as the most rapidly growing herbage is the most 
speedy in its decay—just as the ephemera struggles 
to perfection in a day only to perish in that day’s 
decline—so the mind is early matured only to be 
early in its decadence; and when we behold in the 
eye of infancy the soul of the adult, it is but indulging 
in a day dream to hope for any farther proportionate 
development. Should the prodigy survive to ripe 
age, a mental imbecility, not far removed from 
idiocy itself, is too frequently the result. From 
this rule the exceptions are rare indeed; but it should 
be observed that, when the exception does occur, 
the intellect is of a Titan cast even to the days of 
its extreme senility, and acquires renown not in 
one, but in all the wide fields of fancy and of reason. 


12 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Lucretia Maria Davidson,* the elder of the two 
sweet sisters who have acquired so much of fame 
prematurely, had not, like Margaret, an object of 
poetical emulation in her own family. In her 
genius, be it what it may, there is more of self- 
dependence—less of the imitative. Her mother’s 
generous romance of soul may have stimulated, but 
did not instruct. Thus, although she has actually 
given less evidence of power (in our opinion) than 
Margaret—less written proof—still its ¢tndzcation 
must be considered at higher value. Both perished 
at sixteen. Margaret, we think, has left the better 
poems—certainly, the more precocious—while Lucre- 
tia evinces more unequivocally the soul of the poet. 
We have quoted in full some stanzas composed by 
the former at eight years of age. The latter’s 
earliest effusions are dated at fourteen. Yet the 
first compositions of the two seem to us of nearly 
equal merit. 

The most elaborate production of Margaret is 
“Lenore.” It was written not long before death, 
at the age of fifteen, after patient reflection, with 
much care, and with all that high resolve to do 
something for fame with which the reputation of 
her sister had inspired her. Under such circum- 
stances, and with the early poetical education 
which she could not have failed to receive, we confess 
that, granting her a trifle more than average talent, 
it would have been rather a matter for surprise had 
she produced a worse, than had she produced a better 
poem than “Lenore.” Its length, viewed in con- 
nexion with its keeping, its unity, its adaptation, 
and its completeness (and all these are points having 


* Poetical Remains of the late Maria Davidson, Collected 
and Arranged by her Mother; with a Biography by Miss 
Sedgwick. Lea & Blanchard: Philadelphia. 


M. MILLER AND L. M. DAVIDSON 33 


reference to artistical knowledge and perseverance) 
will impress the critic more favorably than its fancy, 
or any other indication of poetic power. In all 
the more important qualities we have seen far— 
very far finer poems than “Lenore’’ written at a 
much earlier age than fifteen. 

“Amir Khan,” the longest and chief composition 
of Lucretia, has been long known to the reading 
public. Partly through Professor Morse, yet no 
doubt partly through their own merits, the poems 
found their way to Southey, who, after his peculiar 
fashion, and not unmindful of his previous furores 
in the case of Kirke White, Chatterton, and others 
of precocious ability, or at least celebrity, thought 
proper to review them in the Quarterly. This was 
at a period when we humbled ourselves, with a 
subserviency which would have been disgusting 
had it not been ludicrous, before the crudest critical 
dicta of Great Britain. It pleased the laureate, 
after some squibbing in the way of demurrer, to 
speak of the book in question as follows:—“In 
these poems there is enough of originality, enough 
of aspiration, enough of conscious energy, enough 
of growing power to warrant any expectations, 
however sanguine, which the patrons and the friends 
and parents of the deceased could have formed.” 
Meaning nothing, or rather meaning anything, as 
we choose to interpret it, this sentence was still 
sufficient (and in fact the half of it would have 
been more than sufficient) to establish upon an 
immovable basis the reputation of Miss Davidson 
in America. Thenceforward any examination of 
her true claims to distinction was considered little 
less than a declaration of heresy. Nor does the 
awe of the laureate’s tpse dixit seem even yet to 
have entirely subsided “The genius of Lucretia 


tA EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Davidson,”’ says Miss Sedgwick, ‘‘has had the meed 
of far more authoritative praise than ours; the follow- 
ing tribute is from the London Quarterly Review.”’ 
What this lady—for whom and for whose opinion 
we still have the highest respect—can mean by 
calling the praise of Southey “more authoritative”’ 
than her own, is a point we shall not pause to 
determine. Her praise is at least honest, or we 
hope so. Its “authority” is in exact proportion 
with each one’s estimate of her judgment. But it 
would not do to say all this of the author of “Tha- 
laba.”” It would not do to say it in the hearing 
of men who are sane, and who, being sane, have 
perused the leading articles in the ‘‘ London Quarterly 
Review” during the ten or fifteen years prior to 
that period when Robert Southey, having con- 
cocted ‘‘The Doctor,’ took definite leave of his 
wits. In fact, for anything that we have yet seen — 
or heard to the contrary, the opinion of the laureate, 
in respect to the poem of ‘‘Amir Khan,” is a matter 
still only known to Robert Southey. But were 
it known to all the world, as Miss Sedgwick supposes 
with so charmingly innocent an air; we mean to 
say were it really an honest opinion,—this ‘‘authori- 
tative praise,’’—still it would be worth, in the eyes 
of every sensible person, only just so much as it 
demonstrates, or makes a show of demonstrating. 
Happily the day has gone by, and we trust forever, 
when men are content to swear blindly by the words 
of a master, poet-laureate though he be. But 
what Southey says of the poem is at best an opinion 
and no more. What Miss Sedgwick says of it is 
very much in the same predicament. ‘‘Amir 
Khan,” she writes, ‘‘has long been before the public, 
but we think it has suffered from a general and very 
natural distrust of precocious genius. The versifica- 


M. MILLER AND L. M. DAVIDSON 1s 


tion is graceful, the story beautifully developed, and 
the orientalism well sustained. We think it would 
not have done discredit to our most popular poets in 
the meridian of their fame; as the production of a girl 
of fifteen it seems prodigious.”” The cant of a kind 
heart when betraying into error a naturally sound 
judgment, is perhaps the only species of cant in 
the world not altogether contemptible. 

We yield to no one in warmth of admiration for 
the personal character of these sweet sisters, as that 
character is depicted by the mother, by Miss Sedg- 
wick, and by Mr. Irving. But it costs us no effort 
to distinguish that which, in our heart, is love of 
their worth, from that which, in our intellect, is 
appreciation of their poetic ability. With the 
former, as critic, we have nothing to do. The 
distinction is one too obvious for comment; and its 
observation would have spared us much twaddle on 
the part of the commentators upon ‘‘Amir Khan.” 

We will endeavor to convey, as concisely as pos- 
sible, some idea of this poem as it exists, not in the 
fancy of the enthusiastic, but in fact. It includes 
four hundred and forty lines. The metre is chiefly 
octo-syllabic. At one point it is varied by a casual 
introduction of an anapzst in the first and second 
foot; at another (in a song) by seven stanzas of four 
lines each, rhyming alternately; the metre anapzestic 
of four feet alternating with three. The versification 
is always good, so far as the meagre written rules 
of our English prosody extend; that is to say, there 
is seldom a syllable too much or too little; but long 
and short syllables are placed at random, and a 
crowd of consonants sometimes renders a line un- 
pronounceable. For example: 


He loved,—and oh, he loved so well 
That sorrow scarce dared break the spell. 


16 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


At times, again, the rhythm lapses, in the most 
inartistical manner, and evidently without design, 
from one species to another altogether incongruous; 
as, for example, in the sixth line of these eight, where 
the tripping anapzstic stumbles into the demure 
iambic, recovering itself, even more awkwardly, in 
the conclusion: 


Bright Star of the Morning! this bosom is cold— 
I was forced from my native shade, 

And I wrapped me around with my mantle’s fold, 
A sad, mournful Circassian maid! 

And I then vow’d that rapture should never move 
This changeless cheek, this rayless eye, 

And I then vowed to feel neither bliss nor love, 
But I vowed I would meet thee and dte. 


Occasionally the versification rises into melody 
and even strength; as here— 


*Twas at the hour when Peris love 

To gaze upon the Heaven above 
Whose portals bright with many a gem 
Are closed—forever closed on them. 


Upon the whole, however, it is feeble, vacillating, 
and ineffective; giving token of having been ‘‘touched 
up”’ by the hand of a friend, from a much worse, into 
its present condition. Such rhymes as floor and 
shower—ceased and breast—shade and spread— 
brow and wo—clear and far—clear and air—morn- 
ing and dawning—forth and earth—step and deep— 
Khan and hand—are constantly occurring; and 
although, certainly, we should not, as a general rule, 
expect better things from a girl of sixteen, we still 
look in vain, and with something very much akin to 
a smile, for ought even approaching that ‘‘ marvellous 
ease and grace of versification”’ about which Miss 
Sedgwick, in the benevolence of her heart, discourses. 


M. MILLER AND L. M. DAVIDSON 4 


Nor does the story, to our dispassionate appre- 
hension, appear ‘‘beautifully developed.” It runs 
thus:—Amir Khan, Subahdar of Cachemere, weds 
a Circassian slave who, cold as a statue and as ob- 
stinately silent, refuses to return his love. The 
Subahdar applies to a magician, who gives him 


a pensive flower 
Gathered at midnight’s magic hour; 


the effect of whose perfume renders him apparently 
lifeless while still in possession of all his senses. 
Amreeta, the slave, supposing her lover dead, gives 
way to clamorous grief, and reveals the secret love 
which she has long borne her lord, but refused to 
divulge because a slave. Amir Khan hereupon re- 
vives, and all trouble is at an end. 

Of course, no one at all read in Eastern fables 
will be willing to give Miss Davidson credit for 
originality in the conception of this little story; and 
if she have claim to merit at all, as regards it, that 
claim must be founded upon the manner of narration. 
But it will be at once evident that the most naked 
outline alone can be given in the compass of four 
hundred and forty lines. The tale is, in sober fact, 
told very much as any young person might be ex- 
pected to tell it. The strength of the narrator is 
wholly laid out upon a description of moonlight (in 
the usual style) with which the poem commences— 
upon a second description of moonlight (in precisely 
the same manner) with which a second division 
commences—and in a third description of the hall 
in which the entranced Subahdar reposes. ‘This is 
all—absolutely all; or at least the rest has the naked- 
ness of mere catalogue. We recognise, throughout, 
the poetic sentiment, but little—very little—of 

VoL, VI—2 


18 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


poetic power. We see occasional gleams of imag- 
ination: for example— 


And every crystal cloud of Heaven 
Bowed as it passed the queen of even..... 


Amreeta was cold as the marble floor 
That glistens beneath the nightly shower..... 


At that calm hour when Peris love 

To gaze upon the Heaven above, 
Whose portals bright with many a gem 
Are closed—forever closed on them..... 


The Subahdar with noiseless step 
Rushed like the night-breeze o’er the deep. 


We look in vain for another instance worth quoting. 
But were the fancy seen in these examples observ- 
able either in the general conduct or in the incidents 
of the narrative, we should not feel obliged to dis- 
agree so unequivocally with that opinion which pro-- 
nounces this clever little production ‘one which 
would not have done discredit to our most popular 
poets in the meridian of their fame!” 

“As the work of a girl of sixteen, ’’ most assuredly 
we do not think it “prodigious.’’ In regard to it 
we may repeat what we said of “‘ Lenore,’’—that we 
have seen finer poems in every respect, written by 
children of more immature age. It is a creditable 
composition; nothing beyond this. And, in so say- 
ing, we shall startle none but the brainless, and the 
adopters of ready-made ideas. We are convinced 
that we express the unuttered sentiment of every 
educated individual who has read the poem. Nor, 
having given the plain facts of the case, do we feel 
called upon to proffer any apology for our flat re- 
fusal to play ditto either to Miss Sedgwick, to Mr. 
Irving, or to Mr. Southey, 


WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 19 


WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 


who has just published a very neat little 
volume of poems, we feel the necessity of 
employing the indefinite rather than the definite 
article. He is a, and by no means the, William 
Ellery Channing. He is only the son of the great 
essayist deceased. He is just such a person, in 
despite of his clarum et venerabile nomen, as Pindar 
would have designated by the significant term 7s. 
It may be said in his favor that nobody ever heard 
of him. Like an honest woman, he has always 
succeeded in keeping himself from being made the 
subject of gossip. His book contains about, sixty- 
three things, which he calls poems, and which he 
no doubt seriously supposes so to be. They are 
full of all kinds of mistakes, of which the most 
important is that of their having been printed at 
all. They are not precisely English—nor will we 
insult a great nation by calling them Kickapoo; 
perhaps they are Channingese. We may convey 
some general idea of them by two foreign terms not 
in common use—the Italian pavoneggiarsi, ‘‘to 
strut like a peacock,” and the German word for 
“‘sky-rocketing,’”’ schwarmeret. They are more pre- 
posterous, in a word, than any poems except those 
of the author of ‘‘Sam Patch”; for we presume we 
are right (are we not?) in taking it for granted that 
the author of ‘‘Sam Patch” is the very worst of all 
the wretched poets that ever existed upon earth. 
In spite, however, of the customary phrase about 


i: speaking of Mr. William Ellery Channing, 


20 EDGAR ALLAN POE 

a man’s “making a fool of himself,” we doubt if 
any one was ever a fool of his own free will and 
accord. A poet, therefore, should not always be 
taken too strictly to task. He should be treated 
with leniency, and, even when damned, should 
be damned with respect. Nobility of descent, too, ” 
should be allowed its privileges not more in social 
life than in letters. The son of a great author 
cannot be handled too tenderly by the critical Jack 
Ketch. Mr. Channing must be hung, that’s true. 
He must be hung 7 terrorem—and for this there 
is no help under the sun; but then we shall do him 
all manner of justice, and observe every species of 
decorum, and be especially careful of his feelings, 
and hang him gingerly and gracefully, with a silken 
cord, as the Spaniards hang their grandees of the 
blue blood, their nobles of the sangre azula. 

To be serious, then; as we always wish to be if 
possible. Mr. Channing (whom we suppose to be 
a very young man, since we are precluded from 
supposing him a very old one,) appears to have been 
inoculated, at the same moment, with virus from 
Tennyson and from Carlyle. And here we do not 
wish to be misunderstood. For Tennyson, as for 
a man imbued with the richest and rarest poetic ° 
impulses, we have an admiration—a reverence 
unbounded. His ‘‘Morte D’Arthur,” his ‘‘Locksley 
Hall,” his ‘‘Sleeping Beauty,” his ‘‘ Lady of Shalott,”’ 
his “‘Lotos Eaters,” his ‘‘A‘none,”’ and many other 
poems, are not surpassed, in all that gives to Poetry 
its distinctive value, by the compositions of any 
one living or dead. And his leading error—that 
error which renders him unpopular—a point, to 
be sure, of no particular importance—that very 
error, we say, is founded in truth—in a keen per- 
ception of the elements of poetic beauty. We allude 


WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 21 


to his quaintness—to what the world chooses to 
term his affectation. No true poet—no critic whose 
approbation is worth even a copy of the volume 
we now hold in our hand—will deny that he feels 
impressed, sometimes even to tears, by many of 
those very affectations which he is impelled by the 
prejudice of his education, or by the cant of his 
reason, to condemn. He should thus be led to 
examine the extent of the one, and to be wary of 
the deductions of the other. In fact, the profound 
intuition of Lord Bacon has supplied, in one of his 
immortal apothegms, the whole philosophy of the 
point at issue. ‘‘There is no exquisite beauty,” he 
truly says, ‘“‘without some strangeness in its pro- 
portions.” We maintain, then, that Tennyson errs, 
not in his occasional quaintness, but in its continual 
and obtrusive excess. And, in accusing Mr. Chan- 
ning of having been inoculated with virus from 
Tennyson, we merely mean to say that he has 
adopted and exaggerated that noble poet’s charac- 
teristic defect, having mistaken it for his principal 
merit. 

Mr. Tennyson is quaint only; he is never, as some 
have supposed him, obscure—except, indeed, to 
the uneducated, whom he does not address. Mr. 
Carlyle, on the other hand, is obscure only; he is 
seldom, as some have imagined him, quaint. 5o 
far he is right; for although quaintness, employed 
by a man of judgment and genius, may be made 
auxiliary to a poem, whose true thesis is beauty, 
and beauty alone, it is grossly, and even ridiculously, 
out of place in a work of prose. But in his obscurity 
it is scarcely necessary to say that he is wrong. 
Either a man intends to be understood, or he does 
not. If he write a book which he intends not to be 
understood, we shall be very happy indeed not to 


22 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


understand it; but if he write a book which he means 
to be understood, and, in this book, be at all possible 
pains to prevent us from understanding it, we can 
only say that he is an ass—and this, to be brief, 
is our private opinion of Mr. Carlyle, which we now 
take the liberty of making public. 

It seems that having deduced, from Tennyson 
and Carlyle, an opinion of the sublimity of every- 
thing odd, and of the profundity of everything 
meaningless, Mr. Channing has conceived the idea 
of setting up for himself as a poet of unusual depth, 
and very remarkable powers of mind. His airs and 
graces, in consequence, have a highly picturesque 
effect, and the Boston critics, who have a notion 
that poets are porpoises, (for they are always talking 
about their running in “schools,”) cannot make up 
their minds as to what particular school he must 
belong. We say the Bobby Button school, by all 
means. He clearly belongs to that. And should 
nobody ever have heard of the Bobby Button school, 
that is a point of no material importance. We will 
answer for it, as itis one of ourown. Bobby Button 
is a gentleman with whom, for a long time, we have 
had the honor of an intimate acquaintance. His 
personal appearance is striking. He has quite a 
big head. His eyes protrude and have all the air 
of saucers. His chin retreats. His mouth is 
depressed at the corners. He wears a perpetual 
frown of contemplation. His words are slow, 
emphatic, few, and oracular. His “thes,” “ands,” 
and “buts,” have more meaning than other men’s 
polysyllables. His nods would have put Burleigh’s 
to the blush. His whole aspect, indeed, conveys 
the idea of a gentleman modest to a fault, and 
painfully overburthened with intellect. We insist, 
however, upon calling Mr. Channing’s school of 


WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 3 


poetry the Bobby Button school, rather because Mr. 
Channing’s poetry is strongly suggestive of Bobby 
Button, than because Mr. Button himself ever 
dallied, to any very great extent, with the Muses. 
With the exception, indeed, of a very fine “Sonnet 
to a Pig’’—or rather the fragment of a sonnet, for 
he proceeded no farther than the words “O piggy 
wiggy,”’ with the O italicized for emphasis—with 
the exception of this, we say, we are not aware of 
his having produced anything worthy of that stupen- 
dous genius which is certainly zm him, and only 
wants, like the starling of Sterne, “to get out.”’ 

The best passage in the book before us, is to be 
found at page 121, and we quote it, as a matter of 
simple justice, in full: | 

Dear friend, in this fair atmosphere again, 
Far from the noisy echoes of the main, 

Amid the world-old mountains, and the hills 
From whose strange grouping a fine power distills 
The soothing and the calm, I seek repose, 
The city’s noise forgot and hard stern woes. 
As thou once said’st, the rarest sons of earth 
Have in the dust of cities shown their worth, 
Where long collision with the human curse 
Has of great glory been the frequent nurse, 
And only those who tn sad cities dwell 

Are of the green trees fully sensible. 

To them the stlver bells of tinkling streams 
Seem brighter than an angel’s laugh in dreams. 


The four lines italicized are highly meritorious, 
and the whole extract is so far decent and intelligible, 
that we experienced a feeling of surprise upon meet- 
ing it amid the doggerel which surrounds it. Not 
less was our astonishment upon finding, at page 18, 
a fine thought so well embodied as the following: 


Or see the early stars, a mild sweet train. 
Come out to bury the diurnal sun. 


24 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


But, in the way of commendation, we have now 
done. We have carefully explored the whole volume 
in vain, for a single additional line worth even the 
most qualified applause. 

The utter abandon—the charming negligé—the 
perfect looseness (to use a western phrase) of his 
rhythm, is one of Mr. C.’s most noticeable, and 
certainly one of his most refreshing traits. It 
would be quite a pleasure to hear him read or scan, 
or to hear anybody else read or scan, such a line 
as this, at page 3, for example: 


Masculine almost though softly carv’d in grace, 


where “masculine” has to be read as a trochee, and 
“almost”’ as an iambus; or this, at page 8: 


That compels me on through wood, and fell, and moor, 


Where “that compels’? Has to be pronounced as 
equivalent to the iambus “me on’’; or this, at page 
18: 

I leave thee, the maid spoke to the true youth, 


where both the ‘‘thes’’ demand a strong accent to 
preserve the iambic rhythm; or this, at page 29: 


So in our steps strides truth and honest trust, 


where (to say nothing of the grammar, which may 
be Dutch, but is not English) it is quite impossible 
to get through with the “step strides truth”’ without 
dislocating the under jaw; or this, at page 32: 


The serene azure the keen stars are now; 
or this, on the same page: 

Sometimes of sorrow, joy, to thy Future; 
or this, at page 56: 


Harsh action, even in repose inwardly harsh; 


WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 25 
or this, at page 59: 


Provides amplest enjoyment. O my brother; 
or this, at page 138: 
Like the swift petrel, mimicking the wave’s measure 


about all of which the less we say the better. 
At page 96, we read thus: 


Where the untrammelled soul on her wind pinions, 
Fearlessly sweeping, defies my earthly foes, 

There, there upon that infinitest sea 

Lady thy hope, so fair a hope, summons me, 


At page 51, we have it thus: 


The river calmly flows 

Through shining banks, thro’ lonely glen 

Where the owl shrieks, tho’ ne’er the cheer of men 
Has stirred its mute repose; 

Still af you should walk there you would go there again, 


At page 136, we read as follows: 


Tune thy clear voice to no funereal song, 
For O Death stands to welcome thee sure, 


At page 116, he has this: 


These graves, you mean; 

Their history who knows better than I? 
For in the busy street strikes on my ear 
Each sound, even inaudible voices 
Lengthen the long tale my memory tells, 





Just below, on the same page, he has 
I see but little difference truly; 


and at page 76 he fairly puts the climax to metrical 
absurdity in the lines which follow: 
The spirit builds his house in the last flowers— 


A beautiful mansion; how the colors live, 
Intricately delzcate! 


26 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


This is to be read, of course, intrikkittly delikkit, 
and ‘‘intrikkittly delikkit”’ it is —unless, indeed, 
we are very especially mistaken. 

The affectations—the Tennysonisms of Mr. Chan- 
ning-—pervade his book at all points, and are not 
easily particularized. He employs, for example, 
the word ‘‘delight” for ‘‘delighted”’; as at page 2: 


Delight to trace the mountain-brook’s descent. 


He uses, also, all the prepositions in a different sense 
from the rabble. If, for instance, he was called 
upon to say ‘‘on,’’ he wouldn’t say it by any means, 
but he’d say ‘‘off,”’ and endeavor to make it answer 
the purpose. For ‘“‘to,’’ in the same manner, he 
says ‘‘from’”’; for ‘‘with,’’ “‘of,’’ and so on: at page 
2, for example: 


Nor less in winter, mid the glittering banks 
Heaped of unspotted snow, the maiden roved, 


For ‘‘serene,’’ he says ‘‘serene’’; as at page 4: 
The influences of this serene isle. 
For ‘‘subdued,’’ he says ‘‘subdued”’: as at page 16: 
So full of thought, so subdued to bright fears, 


By the way, what kind of fears are bright? 
For ‘‘eternal,’’ he says ‘‘eterne”’: as at page 30: 


Has risen, and an eterne sun now paints, 


For ‘‘friendless,’”’ he substitutes ‘‘friendless’’; as at 
page 31: 


Are drawn in other figures. Not friendless. 
To ‘‘future,’’ he prefers ‘‘future”: as at page 32: 


Sometime of sorrow. Joy to thy future. 


WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 27 


To ‘‘azure, in the same way, he prefers ‘‘azure’’: 
as at page 46: 


Ye stand each separate in the azure. 


In place of ‘‘unheard,” he writes ‘‘unheard’’: as 
thus, at page 47: 


Or think, tho’ unheard, that your sphere is dumb, 


In place of “‘perchance,’’ he writes ‘‘perchance’’: 
as at page 71: 


When perchance sorrow with her icy smile. 


Instead of ‘‘more infinite,’ he writes ‘‘infindter,”’ 
with an accent on the ‘‘nit,” as thus, at page 100: 


Hope’s child, I summon infizzter powers. 


And here we might as well ask Mr. Channing, in 
passing, what idea he attaches to infinity, and 
whether he really thinks that he is at liberty to 
subject the adjective ‘‘infinite” to degrees of com- 
parison. Some of these days we shall hear, no 
doubt, of ‘‘eternal, eternaler, and eternalest.” 

Our author is quite enamoured of the word 
‘‘sumptuous,” and talks about ‘“‘sumptuous trees”’ 
and “‘sumptuous girls,” with no other object, we 
think, than to employ the epithet av all hazards 
and upon all occasions. He seems unconscious 
that it means nothing more than expensive, or 
costly; and we are not quite sure that either trees 
or girls are, in America, either the one or the other. 

For ‘‘loved”’ Mr. C. prefer8 to say ‘‘was loving,” 
and takes great pleasure in the law phrase ‘‘the 
same.’ Both peculiarities are exemplified at page 
20, where he says: 


The maid was loving this enamoured same, 


He is fond also, of inversions and contractions, and 


28 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


employs them in a very singular manner. At page 
15 he has: 


Now may I thee describe a Paradise 


At page 86 he says: 


Thou lazy river, flowing neither way 
Me figurest and yet thy banks seem gay. 


At page 143 he writes: 


Men change that Heaven above not more; 


meaning that men change so much that Heaven 
above does not change more. At page 150 he says: 


But so much soul hast thou within thy form 
Than luscious summer days thou art the more 


by which he would imply that the lady has so much 
soul within her form that she is more luscious than © 
luscious summer days. 

Were we to quote specimens under the general 
head of “utter and irredeemable nonsense,’ we 
should quote nine-tenths of the book. Such non- 
sense, we mean, as the following, from page 11: 


I hear thy solemn anthem fali, 
Of richest song upon my ear, 

That clothes thee in thy golden pall 
As this wide sun flows on the mere. 


Now let us translate ths: He hears (Mr. Channing, ) 
a solemn anthem, of richest song, fall upon his ear, 
and this anthem clothes the individual who sings 
it in that individual’s golden pall, in the same 
manner that, or at the time when, the wide sun 
flows on the mere—which is all very delightful, no 
doubt. | 


WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 20 
At page 37, he informs us that, 


——lIt is not living, 

To a soul believing, 

To change each noble joy, 
Which our strength employs, 
For a state half rotten 

And a life of toys, 


And that it is 


Better to be forgotten 
Than lose equipoise. 


And we dare say it is, if one could only understand 
what kind of equipoise is intended. It is better 
to be forgotten, for instance, than to lose one’s 
equipoise on the top of a shot tower. 

Occupying the whole of page 88, he has the six 
lines which follow, and we will present any one 
(the author not excepted,) with a copy of the 
volume, if any one will tell us what they are all 
about: 


He came and waved a little silver wand, 

He dropped the veil that hid a statue fair, 
He drew a circle with that pearly hand, 

His grace confin’d that beauty in the air, 
Those limbs so gentle now at rest from flight, 
Those quiet eyes now musing on the night. 


At page 102, he has the following -— 


Dry leaves with yellow ferns, they are 
Fit wreath of Autumn, while a star 
Still, bright, and pure, our frosty air 
Shivers in twinkling points 
Of thin celestial hair 
And thus one side of Heaven anoints, 


This we think we can explain. Let us see. Dry 
leaves, mixed with yellow ferns, are a wreath fit 
for autumn at the time when our frosty air shivers 


4, 


30 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


a still, bright, and pure star with twinkling points 
of thin celestial hair, and with this hair, or hair 
plaster, anoints one side of the sky. Yes—this 
is it—no doubt. 

At page 123, we have these lines: 


My sweet girl is lying still 
In her lovely atmosphere; 

The gentle hopes her blue veins fill 
With pure silver warm and clear. 


O see her hair, O mark her breast! 
Would it not, O/ comfort thee, 

If thou couldst nightly go to rest 
By that virgin chastity? 


Yes; we think, upon the whole, it would. The 
eight lines are entitled a “Song,’’ and we should 
like very much to hear Mr. Channing sing it. 

Pages 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, and 41, are filled with . 
short “Thoughts’’ in what Mr. C. supposes to be 
the manner of Jean Paul. One of them runs thus: 


How shall I live? In earnestness. 
What shall I do? Work earnestly. 
What shall I give? A willingness, 
What shall I gain? ‘Tranquility. 

But do you mean a quietness 

In which I act and no man bless? 
Flash out in action infinite and free, 
Action conjoined with deep tranquility, 
Resting upon the soul’s true utterance, 
And life shall flow as merry as a dance, 


All our readers will be happy to hear, we are sure, 
that Mr. C. is going “to flash out.’’ Elsewhere 
at page 97, he expresses vevy similar sentiments: 


My empire is myself and I dyfy 
The external; yes, I rule the whole or die, 


WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING aI 


It will be observed here, that Mr. Channing’s empire 
is himself, (a small kingdom, however,) that he 
intends to defy “the external,’’ whatever that is— 
perhaps he means the infernals—and that, in short, 
he is going to rule the whole or die; all which is very 
proper, indeed, and nothing more than we have 
to expect from Mr. C. 

Again, at page 146, he is rather fierce than other- 
wise. He says: 


We surely were not meant to ride the sea, 

Skimming the wave in that so prisoned small, 
Reposing our infinite faculties utterly. 

Boom like a roaring sunlit waterfall. 
Humming to infinite abysms: speak loud, speak free! 


Here Mr. Channing not only intends to ‘‘speak 
loud and free” himself, but advises every body 
else to do likewise. For his own part, he says, he 
is going to ‘‘boom’”’—‘‘to hum and to boom”—to 
‘‘hum like a roaring waterfall,’’ and ‘‘boom to an 
infinite abysm.’’ What, in the name of Belzebub, 
ts to become of us all? 

At page 39, while indulging in similar bursts of 
fervor and of indignation, he says: 


Thou meetest a common man 
With a delusive show of can, 


and this passage we quote by way of instancing 
what we consider the only misprint in the book. 
Mr. Channing could never have meant to say: 


Thou meetest a common man 
With a delusive show of can; 


for what ts a delusive show of can? No doubt it 
should have been, 


Thou meetest a little pup 
With a delusive show of tin-cup, 


32 EDGAR ALLAN POH 


A can, we believe, is a tin-cup, and the cup must 
have been tied to the tail of the pup. Boys will do 
such tricks, and there is no earthly way of prevent- 
ing them, we believe, short of cutting off their heads 
—or. the tails of the pups. 

And this remarkable little volume is, after all, 
by William Ellery Channing. A great name it has 
been said, is, in many cases, a great misfortune. 
We hear daily complaints from the George Wash- 
ington Dixons, the Socrates Smiths, and the Napo- 
leon Buonaparte Joneses, about the inconsiderate 
ambition of their parents and sponsors. By inducing 
invidious comparison, these prenomina get their 
bearers (so they say) into every variety of scrape. 
If George Washington Dixon, for example, does 
not think proper, upon compulsion, to distinguish 
himself as a patriot, he is considered a very singular 
man; and Socrates Smith is never brought up before 
his honor the Mayor without receiving a double 
allowance of thirty days; while his honor the Mayor 
can assign no sounder reason for his severity, than 
that better things than getting toddied are to be 
expected of Socrates. Napoleon Buonaparte Jones, 
on the other hand, to say nothing of being called 
Nota Bene Jones by all his acquaintance, is cow- 
skinned, with perfect regularity, five times a month, 
merely because people will feel it a point of honor 
to cowskin a Napoleon Buonaparte. 

And yet these gentlemen—the Smiths and the 
Joneses—are wrong zu toto—as the Smiths and the 
Joneses invariably are. They are wrong, we say, 
in accusing their parents and sponsors. They err 
in attributing their misfortunes and persecutions 
to the prenomina—to the names assigned them at 
the baptismal font. Mr. Socrates Smith does not 
receive his double quantum of thirty days because 


WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 33 


he is called Socrates, but because he is called Socrates 
Smith. Mr. Napoleon Buonaparte Jones is not in 
the weekly receipt of a flogging on account of being 
Mr. Napoleon Buonaparte, but simply on account 
of being Mr. Napoleon Buonaparte Jones. Here, 
indeed, is a clear distinction. It is the surname 
which is to blame, after all. Mr. Smith must drop 
the Smith. Mr. Jones should discard the Jones. 
No one would ever think of taking Socrates— 
socrates solely—to the watchhouse; and there is 
not a bully living who would venture to cowskin 
Napoleon Buonaparte per se. And the reason is 
plain. With nine individuals out of ten, as the 
world is at present happily constituted, Mr. Socrates 
(without the Smith) would be taken for the veritable 
philosopher of whom we have heard so much, and 
Mr. Napoleon Buonaparte (without the Jones) 
would be received implicitly as the hero of Auster- 
litz. And should Mr. Napoleon Buonaparte (with- 
out the Jones) give an opinion upon military strat- 
egy, it would be heard with the profoundest respect. 
And should Mr. Socrates (without the Smith) deliver 
a lecture or write a book, what critic so bold as not 
to pronounce it more luminous than the logic of 
Emerson, and more profound than the Orphicism 
of Alcott. In fact, both Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones, 
in the case we have imagined, would derive through 
their own ingenuity, a very material advantage. 
But no such ingenuity has been needed in the case 
of Mr. William Ellery Channing, who has been 
befriended by Fate, or the foresight of his sponsors, 
and who has no Jones or Smith at the end of his 
name. 

And here, too, a question occurs. There are 
many people in the world silly enough to be deceived 
by appearances. There are individuals so crude 

Vou. VI—3 


34 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


in intellect—so green, (if we may be permitted to 
employ a word which answers our purpose much 
better than any other in the language,) so green, 
we say, as to imagine, in the absence of any indica- 
tion to the contrary, that a volume bearing upon 
its title-page the name of William Ellery Channing, 
must necessarily be the posthumous work of that 
truly illustrious author, the sole William Ellery 
Channing of whom any body in the world ever heard. 
There are a vast number of uninformed young 
persons prowling about our book-shops, who will 
be raw enough to buy, and even to read half through 
this pretty little book, (God preserve and forgive 
them!) mistaking it for the composition of another. 
But what then? Are not books made, as well as 
razors, to sell? The poet’s name zs William Ellery 
Channing—is it not? And if a man has not a right 
to the use of his own name, to the use of what has 
he a right? And could the poet have reconciled 
it to his conscience to have injured the sale of his 
own volume by any uncalled-for announcement 
upon the title-page, or in a preface, to the effect 
that he is not his father, but only his father’s very 
intelligent son? To put the case more clearly by 
reference to our old friends, Mr. Smith and Mr. 
Jones. Is either Mr. Smith, when mistaken for 
Socrates, or Mr. Jones, when accosted as Napoleon, 
bound, by any conceivable species of honor, to 
inform the whole world—the one, that he is not 
socrates, but only Socrates Smith; the other, that 
he is by no means Napoleon Buonaparte, but only 
Napoleon Buonaparte Jones? 


WILLIAM WALLACE 35 


WILLIAM WALLACE 


MONG our men of genius whom, because 
they are men of genius, we neglect, let 
me not fail to mention WILLIAM WALLACE, 

of Kentucky. Had Mr. W. been born under the 
wings of that ineffable buzzard, “The North Ameri- 
can Review,’’ his unusual merits would long ago 
have been blazoned to the world—as the far inferior 
merits of Sprague, Dana, and others of like calibre, 
have already been blazoned. Neither of these 
gentlemen has written a poem worthy to be com- 
pared with “The Chaunt of a Soul,” published in 
“The Union Magazine’ for November, 1848. It 
is a noble composition throughout—imaginative, 
eloquent, full of dignity, and well sustained. It 
abounds in ecrached images of high merit—for 
example: 


Your early splendor’s gone 

Like stars into a cloud withdrawn— 
Like music laid asleep 

In dried up fountains..... 


Enough, I am, and shall not choose to die, 
No matter what our future Fate may be, 
To live, is in itself a majesty..... 


And Truth, arising from yon deep, 
Is plain as a white statue on a tall, dark steep... 


———Then 
The Earth and Heaven were fair, 

While only less than Gods seemed all my fellow men, 
Oh, the delight—the gladness— 

The sense, yet love, of madness— 


30 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


The glorious choral exultations— 

The far-off sounding of the banded nations— 
The wings of angels in melodious sweeps 

Upon the mountain’s hazy steeps— 

‘The very dead astir within thetr coffined deeps— 
The dreamy veil that wrapt the star and sod— 
A swathe of purple, gold, and amethyst— 
And, luminous behind the billowing mist 


Something that looked to my young eyes like God. 


I admit that the defect charged, by an envious 
critic, upon Bayard Taylor—the sin of excessive 
rhetoricianism—zs, in some measure, chargeable to 
Wallace. He, now and then, permits enthusiasm 
to hurry him into bombast; but at this point he is 
rapidly improving; and, if not disheartened by the 
cowardly neglect of those who dare not praise a 
poetical aspirant with genius and without influence, 
will soon rank as one of the very noblest of American 
poets. In fact, he zs so now. 


ESTELLE ANNA LEWIS 37 


ESTELLE ANNA LEWIS 


HE maiden name of Mrs. Lewis was Robin- 
son. She is a native of Baltimore. Her 
family is one of the best in America. Her 

father was a distinguished Cuban of English and 
Spanish parentage, wealthy, influential, and of 
highly cultivated mind:—from him, perhaps, Mrs. 
Lewis has inherited the melancholy temperament 
which so obviously predominates in her writings. 
Between the death of her father and her present 
comfortable circumstances, she has undergone many 
romantic and striking vicissitudes of fortune, which, 
of course, have not failed to enlarge her knowledge 
of human nature, and to develop the poetical 
germ which became manifest in her earliest infancy. 

Mrs. Lewis is, perhaps, the best educated, if not 
the most accomplished of American authoresses— 
using the word ‘‘accomplished”’ in the ordinary 
acceptation of that term. She is not only cultivated 
as respects the usual ornamental acquirements of 
her sex, but excels as a modern linguist, and very 
especially as a classical scholar; while her scientific 
acquisitions are of no common order. Her occa- 
sional translations from the more difficult portions 
of Virgil have been pronounced, by our first Pro- 
fessors, the best of the kind yet accomplishea—a 
commendation which only a thorough classicist 
can appreciate in its full extent. Her rudimental 
education was received, in part, at Mrs. Willard’s 
celebrated Academy at Troy; but she is an incessant 
and very ambitious student, and, in this sense, the 


38 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


more important part of her education may be said 
to have been self-attained. 

In character, Mrs. Lewis is everything which can 
be thought desirable in woman—generous, sensitive, 
- impulsive; enthusiastic in her admiration of Beauty 
and Virtue, but ardent in her scorn of wrong. The 
predominant trait of her disposition, as before 
hinted, is a certain romantic sensibility, bordering 
upon melancholy, or even gloom. In person, she 
is distinguished by the grace and dignity of her 
form, and the nobility of her manner. She has 
auburn hair, naturally curling, and expressive eyes 
of dark hazel. Her portrait, by Elhot, which has 
attracted much attention, is most assuredly no 
flattering likeness, although admirable as a work 
of art, and conveying a forcible idea of its accom- 
plished original, so far as regards the tout ensemble. 

At an early age Miss Robinson was allied in mar- 
riage to Mr. S. D. Lewis, attorney and counsellor — 
at law; and soon afterwards they took up their 
residence in Brooklyn, where they have ever since 
continued to reside—Mr. Lewis absorbed in the 
labors of his profession, as she in the pleasurable 
occupations connected with Literature and Art. 

Her earliest efforts were made in ‘‘The Family 
Magazine,” edited by the well-known Solomon 
Southwick, of Albany. Subsequently she wrote 
much for various periodicals—in chief part for 
‘‘The Democratic Review’’; but her first appearance 
before the public in volume-form, was in the 
‘Records of the Heart,” issued by the Appleton’s 
in 1844. The leading poems in this, are ‘‘ Florence,” 
“‘Zenel,’”’ ‘‘Melpomene,”’ ‘‘Laone,’”’ ‘‘The Last Hour 
of Sappho,” and ‘‘The Bride of Guayaquil’’—all 
long and finished compositions. ‘‘Florence’’ is, 
perhaps, the best of the series, upon the whole— 


ESTELLE ANNA LEWIS 39 


although all breathe the true poetical spirit. It 
is a tale of passion and wild romance, vivid, forcible, 
and artistical. But a faint idea, of course, can be 
given of such a poem by an extract; but we cannot 
refrain from quoting two brief passages as character- 
istic of the general manner and tone: 


Morn is abroad; the sun is up; 

The dew fills high each lily’s cup, 

Ten thousand flowerets springing there 
Diffuse their incense through the air, 

And smiling hail the morning beam: 

The fawns plunge panting in the stream, 
Or through the vale with light foot spring: 
Insect and bird are on the wing, 

And all is bright, as when in May 

Young Nature holds a holiday. 


Again: 


The waves are smooth, the wind is calm; 
Onward the golden stream is gliding 
Amid the myrtle and the palm 
And ilices its margin hiding. 
Now sweeps it o’er the jutting shoals 
In murmurs, like despairing souls, 
Now deeply, softly, flows along, 
Like ancient minstrel’s warbling songs 
Then slowly, darkly, thoughtfully, 
Loses itself in the mighty sea, 


Among the minor poems in this collection is ‘*The 
Forsaken,’ so widely known and so universally 
admired. ‘The popular as well as the critical voice, 
ranks it as the most beautiful ballad of its kind ever 
written. 

We have read this little Poem more than twenty 
times, and always with increasing admiration. It 
ts inexpressibly beautiful. No one of real feeling 
can peruse it without a strong inclination to tears. 


4o EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Its irresistible charm is its absolute truth—the 
unaffected naturalness of its thought. ‘The senti- 
ment which forms the basis of the composition, is, 
perhaps, at once the most universal and the most 
passionate of sentiments. No human being exists, 
over the age of fifteen, who has not, in his heart of 
hearts, a ready echo for all there so pathetically 
expressed. The essential poetry of the ideas would 
only be impaired by “foreign ornament.” This 
is a case in which we should be repelled by the mere 
conventionalities of the Muse. We demand, for 
such thoughts, the most rigorous simplicity at all 
points. It will be observed that, strictly speaking, 
there is not an attempt at “imagery” in the whole 
poem. Allis direct, terse, penetrating. In a word, 
nothing could be better done. The versification, 
while in full keeping with the general character of 
simplicity, has, in certain passages, a vigorous, 
trenchant euphony which would confer honor on 
the most accomplished masters of the art. We 
refer, especially to the lines: 


And follow me to my long home 
Solemn and slow, 


And the quatrain: 


Could I but know when I am sleeping 
Low in the ground, 

One faithful heart would there be keeping 
Watch all night round. 


The initial trochee here, in each instance, sub- 
stituted for the iambus, produces, so naturally as 
to seem accidental, a very effective echo of sound 
to sense. The thought included in the line “And 
light the tomb,” should be dwelt upon to be appre- 
ciated in its full extent of beauty; and the verses 


ESTELLE ANNA LEWIS 4I 


which I have italicized in the last stanza, are poetry 
—poetry in the purest sense of that much misused 
word. They have power—indisputable power; mak- 
ing us thrill with a sense of their weird magnificence 
as we read them. 

After the publication of the “Records,’”’ Mrs. 
Lewis contributed more continuously to the period- 
icals of the day—her writings appearing chiefly in 
the “American Review,” and the ‘“ Democratic 
Review,’ and ‘“Graham’s Magazine.’ In the au- 
tumn of 1848, Mr. G. P. Putnam published, in 
exquisite style, her “Child of the Sea, and Other 
Poems’’—a volume which at once placed its fair 
authoress in the first rank of American authors. 
The composition which gives title to this collection 
is a tale of sea-adventure—of crime, passion, love 
and revenge—resembling, in all the nobler poetic 
elements, the ‘Corsair’ of Lord Byron—from 
which, however, it widely differs in plot, conduct, 
manner, and expression. The opening lines not 
only give a general summary of the design, but 
serve well to exemplify the ruling merits of the 
composition :— 


Where blooms the myrtle and the olive flings 
Its aromatic breath upon the air; 
Where the sad bird of Night forever sings 
Meet anthems for the children of Despair, 
Who, silently, with wild dishevelled hair, 
Stray through those valleys of perpetual bloom; 
Where hideous War and Murder from their lair 
Stalk forth in awful and terrific gloom 

Rapine and Vice disport on Glory’s gilded tomb: 


My fancy pensive pictures youthful Love, 
Ill-starred yet trustful, truthful and sublime 
As ever angels chronicled above :— 

The sorrowings of Beauty in her prime; 


42 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Virtue’s reward; the punishment of Crime; 

The dark, inscrutable decrees of Fate; 

Despair untold before in prose or rhyme; 

The wrong, the agony, the sleepless hate 

That mad the soul and make the bosom desolate. 


One of the most distinguishing merits of the 
“Child of the Sea,’”’ is the admirable conduct of its 
narrative—in which every incident has its proper 
position—where nothing is inconsequent or inco- 
herent—and where, above all, the rich and vivid 
interest is never, for a single moment, permitted 
to flag. How few, even of the most accomplished 
and skilful of poets, are successful in the manage- 
ment of a story, when that story has to be told in 
verse. The difficulty is easily analyzed. In all 
mere narrations there are particulars of the dullest 
prose, which are inevitable and indispensable, but 
which serve no other purpose than to bind 
together the true interest of the incidents—in a 
word, explanatory passages, which are yet to be 
“so done into verse”’ as not to let down the imagina- 
tion from its pride of place. Absolutely to poetize 
these explanatory passages is beyond the reach of 
art, for prose, and that of the flattest kind, is their 
essentiality; but the skzll of the artist should be 
sufficient to gloss them over so as to seem poetry 
amid the poetry by which they are surrounded. 
For this end a very consummate art is demanded. 
Here the tricks of phraseology—quaintnesses—and 
thythmical effects, come opportunely into play. 
Of the species of skill required, Moore, in his “ Alci- 
phron,” has given us, upon the whole, the happiest 
exemplification; but Mrs. Lewis has very admirably 
succeeded in her “Child of the Sea.” I am strongly 
tempted, by way of showing what I mean, to give 
here a digest of her narrative, with comments— 


ESTELLE ANNA LEWIS 43 


but this would be doing the author injustice, in 
anticipating the interest of her work. 

The poem, although widely differing in subject 
from any of Mrs. Lewis’ prior compositions, and far 
superior to any of them in general vigor, artistic 
skill, and assured certainty of purpose, is never- 
theless easily recognisable as the production of the 
same mind which originated ‘‘Florence” and ‘‘The 
Forsaken.””’ We perceive, throughout, the same 
passion, the same enthusiasm, and the same seem- 
ingly reckless abandon of thought and manner which 
I have already mentioned as characterizing the 
writer. I should have spoken also, of a fastidious 
yet most sensitive and almost voluptuous sense 
of Beauty. These are the general traits of ‘‘The 
Child of the Sea”; but undoubtedly the chief value 
of the poem, to ordinary readers, will be found to 
lie in the aggregation of its imaginative passages— 
its quotable points. I give a few of these at random: 
—the description of sunset upon the Bay of Gibraltar 
will compare favorably with anything of a similar 
character ever written: 


Fresh blows the breeze on Tarick’s burnished bay; 
The silent sea-mews bend them through the spray: 
The Beauty-freighted barges bound afar 

To the soft music of the gay guitar. 


I quote further: 





the oblivious world of sleep— 
That rayless realm where Fancy never beams— © 
That Nothingness beyond the Land of Dreams. «. « « 


Folded his arms across his sable vest, 

As tf to keep the heart within hts breast. 
—___—_——_————-he lingers by the streams, 
Pondering on incommunicable themes. . . 


44 


EDGAR ALLAN POE 
Nor notes the fawn that tamely by him glides 
The violets lifting up their azure eyes 


Like timid virgins whom Love's steps Surprisé@. « oe 


And all is hushed—so still—so silent there 


' That one might hear an angel wing the air. « « « 


Adown the groves and dewy vales afar 
Tinkles the serenader’s soft guitar. . . « 





her tender cares, 

Her solemn sighs, her silent streaming tears, 
Her more than woman’s soft solicttude 

To soothe his spirit in tts frantic mood. .. « 


Now by the crags—then by each pendant bough 
Steadies his step adown the mountain’s brow. . « « 


Sinks on his crimson couch, so long unsought, 
And floats along the phantom stream of thought. . « « 


Ah, no! for there are times when the sick soul 
Lies calm amid the storms that round it roll, 
Indifferent to Fate or to what haven 

By the terrific tempest it is driven. ... 


The Dahlias, leaning from the golden vase, 

Peer pensively upon her pallid face, 

While the sweet songster o’er the oaken door 

Looks through his grate and warbles “weep no morel”. « « 





lovely in her misery, 
As jewel sparkling up through the dark sea... . 


Where hung the fiery moon and stars of blood, 
And phantom ships rolled on the rolling flood. . « « 


My mind by grief was ripened ere its time, | 

And knowledge came spontaneous as a chime 

That flows into the soul, unbid, unsought; 

On Earth and Air and Heaven I fed my thought— 
On Ocean’s teachings—tna’s lava tears— 

Ruins and wrecks and nameless sepulchres. . . « 


ESTELLE ANNA LEWIS 48 


Each morning brought to them untasted bliss, 

No pangs—no sorrows came with varying years— 
No cold distrust—no faithlessness—no tears—. . . 
But hand in hand as Eve and Adam trod 

Eden, they walked beneath the smile of God. 


It will be understood, of course, that we quote 
these brief passages by no means as the best, or even 
as particularly excelling the rest of the poem, on 
an averaged estimate of merit, but simply with a 
view of exemplifying some of the author’s more 
obvious traits—those, especially, of vigorous rhythm, 
and forcible expression. In no case can the loftier 
qualities of a truly great poem be conveyed through 
the citation of its component portions, in detail, 
even when long extracts are given—how much less, 
then, by such mere poznis as we have selected. 

‘The Broken Heart”? Gncluded with ‘‘The Child 
of the Sea’’) is even more characteristic of Mrs. 
Lewis than that very remarkable poem. It is 
more enthusiastic, more glowing, more passionate, 
and perhaps more abundant in that peculiar spirit 
of abandon which has rendered Mrs. Maria Brooks’ 
‘‘Zophiel”’ so great a favorite with the critics. ‘‘The 
Child of the Sea” is, of course, by far the more 
elaborate and more artistic composition, and excels 
‘The Broken Heart”’ in most of those high qualities 
which immortalize a work of art. Its narrative, 
also, is more ably conducted and more replete with 
incident—but to the delicate fancy or the bold 
imagination of a poet, there is an inexpressible 
charm in the latter. 

The minor poems embraced in the volume pub- 
lished by Mr. Putnam, evince a very decided advance 
in skill made by their author since the issue of the 
“Records of the Heart.”’ A nobler poem than the 
“La Vega” could not be easily pointed out. Its 


46 EDGAR ALLAN POE 

fierce energy of expression will arrest attention very 
especially—but its general glow and vigor have 
rarely been equalled. 

Among the author’s less elaborate compositions, 
however, “The Angel’s Visit,’ written since the 
publication of her “Child of the Sea,’ is, perhaps, 
upon the whole, the best—although “The For- 
saken’’ and “La Vega’’ are scarcely, if at all, 
inferior. 

In summing up the autorial merits of Mrs. Lewis, 
all critical opinion must agree in assigning her a 
high, if notthe very highest rank among the poetesses 
of her land. Her artistic ability is unusual; her 
command of language great; her acquirements 
numerous and thorough; her range of incident wide; 
her invention, generally, vigorous; her fancy exu- 
berant; and her imagination—that primary and 
most indispensable of all poetic requisites—richer, | 
perhaps, than any of her female contemporaries. 
But as yet—her friends sincerely believe—she has 
given merely an earnest of her powers. 


JOEL T, HEADLEY 49 


JOEL T. HEADLEY* 


will he not put his full title in his title-pages ?) 

has in his “Sacred Mountains” been reversing 
the facts of the old fable about the mountains that 
brought forth the mouse—parturiunt montes nascetur 
ridiculus mus—for in this instance it appears to be 
the mouse—the little rzdzculus mus—that has been 
bringing forth the “Mountains,” and a great litter 
of them, too. The epithet, funny, however, is 
perhaps the only one which can be considered as 
thoroughly applicable to the book. We say that 
a book is a “funny” book, and nothing else, when 
it spreads over two hundred pages an amount of 
matter which could be conveniently presented in 
twenty of a magazine: that a book is a “funny” 
book—“only this and nothing more’’—when it is 
written in that kind of phraseology, in which John 
Philpot Curran, when drunk, would have made a 
speech in at a public dinner: and, moreover, we do 
say, emphatically, that a book is a “funny’’ book, 
and nothing but a funny book, whenever it happens 
to be penned by Mr. Headley. 

We should like to give some account of “The 
Sacred Mountains,’ if the thing were only possible 
—but we cannot conceive that it is. Mr. Headley 
belongs to that numerous class of authors, who must 
be read to be understood, and who, for that reason, 


T= REVEREND MR. HEADLEY—(why 


* The Sacred Mountains: By J. T. Headley,—Author of 
“Napoleon and his Marshals,” ‘* Washington and his Generals, 
etc,’ 


48 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


very seldom are as thoroughly comprehended as 
they should be. Let us endeavor, however, to 
give some general idea of the work. “The design,” 
says the author, in his preface, “is to render more 
familiar and life-like, some of the scenes of the 
Bible.” Here, in the very first sentence of his pref- 
ace, we suspect the Reverend Mr. Headley of fibbing: 
for his design, as it appears to ordinary apprehen- 
sion, is merely that of making a little money by 
selling a little book. 

The mountains described are Ararat, Moriah, 
Sinai, Hor, Pisgah, Horeb, Carmel, Lebanon, Zion, 
Tabor, Olivet, and Calvary. Taking up these, one 
by one, the author proceeds in his own very peculiar 
way, to elocutionize about them: we really do not 
know how else to express what it is that Mr. Headley 
does with these eminences. Perhaps if we were 
to say that he stood up before the reader and “made 
a speech’? about them, one after the other, we 
should come still nearer the truth. By way of 
carrying out his design, as announced in the pref- 
ace, that of rendering “more familiar and life- 
like some of the scenes’’ and so-forth, he tells not 
only how each mountain is, and was, but how it 
might have been and ought to be in his own opinion. 
To hear him talk, anybody would suppose that he 
had been at the laying of the corner-stone of Solo- 
mon’s Temple—to say nothing of being born and 
brought up in the ark with Noah, and hail-fellow- 
well-met, with every one of the beasts that went 
into it. If any person really desires to know how 
and why it was that the deluge took place—but 
especially how—if any person wishes to get minute 
and accurate information on the topic—let him read 
“The Sacred Mountains’”—let him only listen to 
the Reverend Mr. Headley. He explains to us 


JOEL T. HEADLEY 49 


precisely how it all took place—what Noah said, 
and thought, while the ark was building, and what 
the people, who saw him building the ark, said and 
thought about his undertaking such a work; and 
how the beasts, birds, and fishes looked, as they 
came in arm in arm; and what the dove did, and 
what the raven did not—in short, all the rest of it: 
nothing could be more beautifully posted up. 
What can Mr. Headley mean, at page 17, by the 
remark that “there is no one who does not lament 
that there is not a fuller antediluvian, history?” 
We are quite sure that nothing that ever hap- 
pened before the flood, has been omitted in the 
scrupulous researches of the author of “The Sacred 
Mountains.” 

He might, perhaps, wrap up the fruits of these 
researches in rather better English than that which 
he employs: 


Yet still the water rose around them till all through the 
valleys nothing but little black islands of human beings were 
seen on the surface . . .The more fixed the irrevocable 
decree, the heavier he leaned on the Omnipotent arm ... 
And lo! a solitary cloud comes drifting along the morning 
sky and catches against the top of the mountain... At 
length emboldened by their own numbers they assembled 
tumultuously together . . . Aaron never appears so perfect 
a character as Moses ... As he advanced from rock to 
rock the sobbing of the multitude that followed after, tore his 
heart-strings . . . Friends were following after whose sick 
Christ had healed . . . The steady mountain threatened 
to lift from its base and be carried away . . . Sometimes 
God’s hatred of sin, sometimes his care for his children, 
sometimes the discipline of his church, were the motives 
... Surely it was his mighty hand that lad on that 
trembling tottering mountain, &c., &c., &c. 


These things are not exactly as we could wish 
them, perhaps:—but that a gentleman should 
Vou. VI—« 


50 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


know so much about Noah’s ark and know anything 
about anything else, is scarcely to be expected. 
We have no right to require English grammar and 
accurate information about Moses and Aaron at 
the hands of one and the same author. For our 
parts, now we come to think of it, if we only under- 
stood as much about Mount Sinai and other matters 
as Mr. Headley does, we should make a point of 
always writing bad English upon principle, whether 
we knew better or not. 

It may well be made a question moreover, how 
far a man of genius is justified in discussing topics 
so serious as those handled by Mr. Headley, in any 
ordinary kind of style. One should not talk about 
Scriptural subjects as one would talk about the 
rise and fall of stocks or the proceedings of Congress. 
Mr. Headley has seemed to feel this and has there- 
fore elevated his manner—a little. For example: 


The fields were smiling in verdure before his eyes; the 
perfumed breezes floated by . .. The sun is satling over 
the encampment. .. That cloud was God’s pavilion; 
the thunder was its sentinels; and the lightning the lances’ 
points as they moved round the sacred trust ... And 
how could he part with his children whom he had borne 
on his brave heart for more than forty years? ... Thus 
everything conspired to render Zion the spell-word of the 
nation and on its summit the heart of Israel seemed to le 
and throb . . . The sun died in the heavens; an earthquake 
thundered on to complete the dismay, &c., &c. 


Here no one can fail to perceive the beauty (in 
an antediluvian, or at least in a Pickwickian sense) 
of these expressions in general, about the floating 
of the breeze, the sailing of the sun, the thundering 
of the earthquake and the throbbing of the heart 
as it lay on the top of the mountain. 

The true artist, however, always rises as he pra- 


JOEL T. HEADLEY 51 


ceeds, and in his last page or so brings all his elocu- 
tion to a climax. Only hear Mr. Headley’s finale. 
He has been describing the crucifixion and now 
soars into the sublime: 


How Heaven regarded this disaster, and the Universe 
felt at the sight, I cannot tell. I know not but tears fell 
like rain-drops from angelic eyes when they saw Christ spit 
upon and struck. I know not but there was silence on 
high for more than “half an hour’’ when the scene of the 
crucifixion was transpiring,—[a scene, as well as an event, 
always “‘transpires”’ with Mr. Headley]—a silence unbroken 
save by the solitary sound of some harp-string on which 
unconsciously fell the agitated, trembling fingers of a 
seraph. I know not but all the radiant ranks on high, 
and even Gabriel himself, turned with the deepest solicitude 
to the Father’s face, to see if he was calm and untroubled 
amid it all. I know not but his composed brow and serene 
majesty were all that restrained Heaven from one universal 
shriek of horror when they heard groans on Calvary— 
dying groans. I know not but they thought God had 
given his glory to another, but one thing I do know, [Ah, 
there 7s really one thing Mr. Headley knows!]—that when 
they saw through the vast design, comprehended the 
stupendous scene, the hills of God shook to a shout that 
never before rung over their bright tops, and the crystal 
sea trembled to a song that had never before stirred its 
bright depths, and the “Glory to God in the Highest,” 
was a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping 
symphonies, 


Here we have direct evidence of Mr. Headley’s 
accuracy not less than of his eloquence. ‘‘I know 
not but that” one is as vast as the other. The one 
thing that he does know he knows to perfection :— 
he knows not only what the chorus was (it was one 
of ‘‘hallelujahs and harping symphonies’’) but also 
how much of it there was—it was a “‘sevenfold 
chorus.” Mr. Headley is a mathematical man. 
Moreover he is a modest man; for he confesses (no 
doubt with tears in his eyes) that really there is 


52 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


one thing that he does not know. ‘‘How Heaven 
regarded this disaster, and the Universe felt at the 
sight, I cannot tell.” Only think of that! J,can- 
not!—/J, Headley, really cannot tell how the Uni- 
verse ‘‘felt’”’ once upon a time! This is downright 
bashfulness on the part of Mr. Headley. He could 
tell if he would only try. Why did he not inquire? 
Had he demanded of the Universe how it felt, can 
any one doubt that the answer would have been— 
‘Pretty well, I thank you, my dear Headley; how 
do you feel yourself?”’ 
“Quack” is a word that sounds well only in the 
mouth of a duck; and upon our honor we feel a 
scruple in using it:—nevertheless the truth should 
be told; and the simple fact is, that the author of 
the ‘‘Sacred Mountains” is the Autocrat of all the 
Quacks. In saying this, we beg not to be mis- 
understood. We mean no disparagement to Mr. 
Headley. We admire that gentleman as much as 
any individual ever did except that gentleman 
himself. He looks remarkably well at all points— 
although perhaps best, EXAS—at a distance—as 
the lying Pindar says he saw Archilochus, who died 
ages before the vagabond was born:—the reader 
will excuse the digression; but talking of one great 
man is very apt to put us in mind of another. We 
were saying—were we not?f—that Mr. Headley is 
by no means to be sneered at as a quack. This 
might be justifiable, indeed, were he only a quack 
in a small way—a quack doing business by retail. 
But the wholesale dealer is entitled to respect. 
Besides, the Reverend author of ‘‘Napoleon and 
his Marshals”? was a quack to some purpose. He 
knows what he is about. We like perfection wher- 
ever we see it. We readily forgive a man for being 
a fool if he only be a perfect fool—and this is a particu- 


JOEL T. HEADLEY 53 


lar in which we cannot put our hands upon our 
hearts and say that Mr. Headley is deficient. He 
acts upon the principle that if a thing is worth doing 
at all it is worth doing well:—and the thing that 
he ‘‘does”’ especially well is the public. 


54 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


GEORGE P. MORRIS 


q “asty are few cases in which mere popu- 
larity should be considered a proper test 
of merit; but the case of song-writing is, 

I think, one of the few. In speaking of song- 

writing, I mean, of course, the composition of brief 

poems with an eye to their adaptation for music 
in the vulgar sense. In this ultimate destination 
of the song proper, lies its essence—its genius. It 
is the strict reference to music—it is the dependence 
upon modulated expression—which gives to this 
branch of letters a character altogether unique, and 
separates it, in great measure and in a manner not 
sufficiently considered, from ordinary literature; 
rendering it independent of merely ordinary pro- 
prieties; allowing it, and in fact demanding for it, 

a wide latitude of Law; absolutely insisting upon a 

certain wild license and zndefinitiveness—an indefini- 

tiveness recognised by every musician who is not 

a mere fiddler, as an important point in the philoso- 

phy of his science—as the soul, indeed, of the sensa- 

tions derivable from its practice—sensations which 
bewilder while they enthral—and which would 
not so enthral if they did not so bewilder. 

The sentiments deducible from the conception 
of sweet sound simply, are out of the reach of analysis 
—although referable, possibly, in their last result, 
to that merely mathematical recognition of equality 
which seems to be the root of all Beauty. Our impres- 
sions of harmony and melody in conjunction, are 


GEORGE P. MORRIS 3s 


more readily analyzed; but one thing is certain— 
that the sentimental pleasure derivable from music, 
is nearly in the ratio of its indefinitiveness. Give 
to music any undue decistion—imbue it with any 
very determinate tone—and you deprive it at once, 
of its ethereal, its ideal, and, I sincerely believe, 
of its intrinsic and essential character. You dispel 
its dream-like luxury:—you dissolve the atmos- 
phere of the mystic in which its whole nature is 
bound up:—you exhaust it of its breath of faery. 
It then becomes a tangible and easily appreciable 
thing—a conception of the earth, earthy. It will 
not, to be sure, lose all its power to please, but all 
that I consider the distinctiveness of that power. 
And to the over-cultivated talent, or to the unimagi- 
native apprehension, this deprivation of its most 
delicate nare will be, not unfrequently, a recom- 
mendation. A determinateness of expression is 
sought—and sometimes by composers who should 
know better—is sought as a beauty, rather than 
rejected as a blemish. Thus we have, even from 
high authorities, attempts at absolute zmztation in 
musical sounds. Who can forget, or cease to regret, 
the many errors of this kind into which some great 
minds have fallen, simply through over-estimating 
the triumphs of skill. Who can help lamenting 
the Battles of Pragues? What man of taste is not 
ready to laugh, or to weep, over their ‘‘guns, drums, 
trumpets, blunderbusses and thunder?” ‘‘Vocal 
music,” says L’Abbaté Gravina, ‘‘ought to imitate 
the natural language of the human feelings and 
passions, rather than the warbling of Canary birds, 
which our singers, now-a-days, affect so vastly to 
mimic with their quaverings and boasted cadences.”’ 
This is true only so far as the ‘‘rather” is concerned. 
If any music must imitate any thing, it were undoubt- 


56 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


edly, better that the imitation should be limited 
as Gravina suggests. 

That indefinitiveness which is at least, one of the 
essentials of true music, must, of course, be kept 
in view by the song-writer; while, by the critic, it 
should always be considered in his estimate of the 
song. It is, in the author, a consciousness—some- 
times, merely an instinctive appreciation, of this 
necessity for the indefinite, which imparts to all 
songs, richly conceived, that free, affluent, and 
hearty manner, little scrupulous about niceties of 
phrase, which cannot be better expressed than by 
the hackneyed French word abandonnemeni, and 
which is so strikingly exemplified in both the serious 
and joyous ballads and carols of our old English 
progenitors. Wherever verse has been found most 
strictly married to music, this feature prevails. 
It is thus the essence of all antique song. It is 
the soul of Homer. It is the spirit of Anacreon. 
It is even the genius of A/schylus. Coming down 
to our own times, it is the vital principle in De 
Béranger. Wanting this quality, no song-writer 
was ever truly popular, and, for the reasons assigned, 
no song-writer need ever expect to be so. 

These views properly understood, it will be seen 
how baseless are the ordinary objections to songs 
proper, on the score of “conceit,’”’ (to use Johnson’s 
word,) or of hyperbole, or on various other grounds 
tenable enough in respect to poetry not designed 
for music. The “conceit,” for example, which some 
envious rivals of Morris have so much objected to— 


Her heart and morning broke together 
In the storm— 


this “conceit”’ is merely in keeping with the essential 
spirit of the song proper. To all reasonable persons 


GEORGE P. MORRIS 57 


it will be sufficient to say that the fervid, hearty, 
free-spoken songs of Cowley and of Donne—more 
especially of Cunningham, of Harrington and of Carew 
—abound in precisely similar things; and that they 
are to be met with, plentifully, in the polished pages 
of Moore and of Béranger, who introduce them with 
thought and retain them after mature deliberation. 
Morris is, very decidedly, our best writer of songs 
—and, in saying this, I mean to assign him a high 
rank as poet. For my own part, I would much 
rather have written the best song of a nation than 
its noblest epic. One or two Hoffman’s songs 
have merit—but they are sad echoes of Moore, and 
even if this were not so (every body knows that 
it zs so) they are totally deficient in the real song- 
essence. “Woodman, Spare that Tree,” and “By 
the Lake where droops the Willow” are compositions 
of which any poet, living or dead, might justly be 
proud. By these, if by nothing else, Morris is 
immortal. It is quite impossible to put down such 
things by sneers. The affectation of contemning 
them is of no avail—unless to render manifest the 
envy of those who affect the contempt. As mere 
poems, there are several of Morris’s compositions 
equal, if not superior, to either of those just men- 
tioned, but as songs I much doubt whether these 
latter have ever been surpassed. In quiet grace 
and unaffected tenderness, I know no American 
poem which excels the following: 
Where Hudson’s wave o’er silvery sands 
Winds through the hills afar, 
Old Crow-nest like a monarch stands, 
Crowned with a single star. 
And there, amid the billowy swells 
Of rock-ribbed, cloud-capped earth, 
My fair and gentle Ida dwells, 
A nymph of mountain birth. 


58 


EDGAR ALLAN POE 


The snow-flake that the cliff receives— 
The diamonds of the showers— 

Spring’s tender blossoms, buds and leaves— 
The sisterhood of flowers— 

Morn’s early beam—eve’s balmy breeze— 
Her purity define;— 

But Ida’s dearer far than these 
To this fond breast of mine. 


My heart is on the hills; the shades 
Of night are on my brow. 

Ye pleasant haunts and silent glades 
My soul is with you now. 


I bless the star-crowned Highlands where 


My Ida’s footsteps roam; 
Oh, for a falcon’s wing to bear— 
To bear me to my home. 


ROBERT M. BIRD 59 


ROBERT M. BIRD 


Infidel, Dr. Bird has risen, in a compara- 
tively short space of time, to a very enviable 
_reputation; and we have heard it’asserted that his 
novel “ The Hawks of Hawk-Hollow,’’* will not fail 
to place his name in the very first rank of American 
writers of fiction. Without venturing to subscribe 
implicitly to this latter supposition, we_still think 
very highly of him who has written Calavar. 

~~ Had this novel reached us some years ago, with 
the title of ‘“ The Hawks of Hawk-Hollow: A Romance 
by the author of Waverley,” we should not perhaps 
have engaged in its perusal with as much genuin 
eagerness, or with so dogged a determination to be 
pleased with it at all events, as we have actually done 
upon receiving it with its proper title, and under 
really existing circumstances. But having read 
the book through, as undoubtedly we should have 
done, if only for the sake of Auld Lang Syne, and 
for the sake of certain pleasantly mirthful, or pleas- 
antly mournful recollections connected with Ivanhoe, 
with the Antiquary, with Kenilworth, and above all, 
with that most pure, perfect, and radiant gem of 
fictitious literature, the Bride of Lammermuir— 
having, we say, on this account, and for the sake 
of these recollections read the novel from beginning 
to end, from Aleph to Tau, we should have pro- 


B: The—Gladiator,.by..Calavar, and by The 


* The Hawks of Hawk-Hollow: a Tradition of Pennsylvania. 
By the author of .Calavar and the Infidel. Philadelphia; 
Carey, Lea & Blanchard. 


60 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


nounced our opinion of its merits somewhat in the 
following manner. | 

“Tt is unnecessary to tell us that this novel is 
written by Sir Walter Scott; and we are really glad 
to find that he has at length ventured to turn his 
attention to American incidents, scenery, and 
manners. We repeat that it was a mere act of 
supererogation to place the words “By the author 
of Waverley”’ in the title-page. The book speaks 
for itself. The style vulgarly so called—the manner 
properly so called—the handling of the subject to 
speak pictorially, or graphically, or as a German 
would say plastically—in a word, the general air, 
the tout ensemble, the prevailing character of the 
story, all proclaim, in words which one who runs 
may read, that these volumes were indited ‘By 
the author of Waverley.’ Having said thus 
much, we should resume our critique as follows: 
“The Hawks of Hawk-Hollow is, however, by no 
means in the best manner of its illustrious author. 
To speak plainly it is a positive failure, and must 
take its place by the side of the Redgauntlets, the 
Monasteries, the Pirates, and the Saint Roman’s 
Wells.” 

All this we should perhaps have been induced to 
say had the book been offered to us for perusal 
some few years ago, with the supposititious title, 
and under the supposititious circumstances afore- 
said. But alas! for our critical independency, the 
case is very different indeed. There can be no 
mistake or misconception in the present instance, 
such as we have so fancifully imagined. The title 
page (here we have it) is clear, explanatory, and not 
to be misunderstood. The “Hawks of Hawk- 
Hollow, A Tradition of Pennsylvania,” that is to 
Say, a novel, is written, so we are assured, not by 


ROBERT M. BIRD 61 


the author of “ Waverley,’’ but by the author of 
that very fine romance ‘“Calavar’’—not by Sir 
Walter Scott, Baronet, but by Robert M. Bird, M. D. 
Now Robert M. Bird is an American. 

In regard to that purely mechanical portion of 
this novel, which it would now be fashionable to 
denominate its style, we have very few observations 
to make. In general it is faultless. Occasionally 
we meet with a sentence ill-constructed—an inarti- 
ncial adaptation of the end to the beginning of a 
paragraph—a circumlocutory mode of saying what 
might have been better said, if said with brevity— 
now and then with a pleonasm, as for example— 
“And if he wore a mask in his commerce with men, 
it was like that zron one of the Bastile, which when 
put on, was put on for life, and was at the same 
time of tron,’’—not unfrequently with a bull proper, 
videlicet. “As he spoke there came into the den, 
eight men attired like the two first who were included 
in the number.’ But we repeat that upon the whole 
the style of the novel—if that may be called its 
style, which style is not—is at least equal to that of 
any American writer whatsoever. In the style 
properly so called—that is to say, in the prevailing 
tone and manner which give character and individu- 
ality to the book, we cannot bring ourselves to 
think that Dr. Bird has been equally fortunate. 
His subject appears always ready to fly away from 
him. He dallies with it continually—hovers inces- 
santly round it, and about it—and not until driven 
to exertion by the necessity of bringing his volumes 
to a close, does he finally grasp it with any appearance 
of energy or good will. The “Hawks of Hawk- 
Hollow’”’ is composed with great inequality of 
manner—at times forcible and manly—at times 
sinking into the merest childishness and imbecility. 


62 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Some portions of the book, we surmise, were either 
not written by Dr. Bird, or were written by him in 
moments of the most utter mental exhaustion. On 
the other hand, the reader will not be disappointed, 
if he looks to find in the novel many—very many 
well sustained passages of great eloquence and 
beauty. 

The Hawks of Hawk-Hollow, if it add a single 
bay to the already green wreath of Dr. Bird’s 
popular reputation, will not, at all events, among 
men whose decisions are entitled to consideration, 
advance the high opinion previously entertained 
of his abilities. It has no pretensions to originality 
of manner, or of style—for we insist upon the 
distinction—and very few to originality of matter. 
It is, in many respects, a bad imitation of Sir Walter 
Scott. Some of its characters, and one or two of 
its incidents, have seldom been surpassed, for force, 
fidelity to nature, and power of exciting interest 
in the reader. It is altogether more worthy of its 
author in its scenes of hurry, of tumult, and con- 
fusion, than in those of a more quiet and philosophi- 
cal nature. Like Calavar and The Infidel, it excels 
in the drama of action and passion, and fails in the 
drama of colloquy. It is inferior, as a whole, to 
the Infidel, and vastly inferior to Calavar. 





We must regard ‘Sheppard Lee,” upon the 
whole, as a very clever, and not altogether unoriginal, 
jeu desprit, Its incidents are well conceived, and 
related with force, brevity, and a species of directness 
which is invaluable in certain cases of narration— 
while in others it should be avoided. The language 
is exceedingly unaffected and (what we regard as 
high praise) exceedingly well adapted to the varying 
subjects. Some fault may be found with the con- 


ROBERT M. BIRD 63 


ception of the metempsychosis which is the basis of 
the narrative. There are two general methods of 
telling stories such as this. One of these methods 
is that adopted by the author of Sheppard Lee. 
He conceives his hero endowed with some idiosyn- 
crasy beyond the common lot of human nature, 
and thus introduces him to a series of adventure 
which, under ordinary circumstances, could occur 
only to a plurality of persons. The chief source 
of interest in such narrative is, or should be, the 
contrasting of these varied events, in their influence 
upon a character unchanging—except as changed 
by the events themselves. This fruitful field of 
interest, however, is neglected in the novel before 
us, where the hero, very awkwardly, partially loses, 
and partially does not lose, his identity, at each 
transmigration. ‘The sole object here in the various 
metempsychoses seems to be, merely the depicting 
of seven different conditions of existence, and the 
enforcement of the very doubtful moral that every 
person should remain contented with his own. 
But it is clear that both these points could have 
been more forcibly shown, without any reference 
to a confused and jarring system of transmigration, 
by the mere narrations of seven different individuals. 
All deviations, especially wide ones, from nature, 
should be justified to the author by some specific 
object—the object, in the present case, might 
have been found, as above-mentioned, in the oppor- 
tunity afforded of depicting widely-different con- 
ditions of existence actuating one individual. 

A second peculiarity of the species of novel to — 
which Sheppard Lee belongs, and a _ peculiarity 
which is not rejected by the author, is the treating 
the whole narrative in a jocular manner throughout 
(inasmuch as to say ‘‘I know I am writing nonsense, 


64 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


but then you must excuse me for the very reason 
that I know it,’’) or the solution of the various 
absurdities by means of a dream, or something 
similar. The latter method is adopted in the pres- 
ent instance—and the idea is managed with un- 
usual ingenuity. Still—having read through the 
whole book, and having been worried to death with 
incongruities (allowing such to exist) until the con- 
cluding page, it is certainly little indemnification 
for our sufferings to learn that, in truth, the 
whole matter was a dream, and that we were very 
wrong in being worried about it at all. The damage 
is done, and the apology does not remedy the griev- 
ance. For this and other reasons, we are led to 
prefer, in this kind of writing, the second general 
method to which we have alluded. It consists in 
a variety of points—principally in avoiding, as may 
easily be done, that directness of expression which — 
we have noticed in Sheppard Lee, and thus leaving 
much to the imagination—in writing as if the 
author were firmly impressed with the truth, yet 
astonished at the immensity of the wonders he re- 
lates, and for which, professedly, he neither claims 
nor anticipates credence—in minuteness of detail, 
especially upon points which have no immediate 
bearing upon the general story—this minuteness not 
being at variance with indirectness of expression— 
in short, by making use of the infinity of arts which 
give verisimilitude to a narration—and by leaving 
the result as a wonder not to be accounted for. It 
will be found that bizzarreries thus conducted, are — 
usually far more effective than those otherwise man- 
aged. The attention of the author, who does not 
depend upon explaining away his incredibilities, is 
directed to giving them the character and the lum- 
inousness of truth, and thus are brought about, 


ROBERT M. BIRD 6s 


unwittingly, some of the most vivid creations of 
human intellect. The reader, too, readily perceives 
and falls in with the writer’s humor, and suffers 
himself to be borne on thereby. On the other 
hand, what difficulty, or inconvenience, or danger 
can there be in leaving us uninformed of the im- 
portant facts that a certain hero did not actually 
discover the elixir vite, could not really make him- 
self really invisible, and was not either a ghost in 
good earnest, or a bona fide wandering Jew? 


VoL. VI—§ 


66 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


CORNELIUS MATHEWS* 


AKONDAH” is the composition of Mr. 
Cornelius Mathews, one of the editors 

of the Monthly Magazine, ‘*Arcturus.’ 

In the December number of the journal, the poem 
was originally set forth by its author, very much 
‘‘avec Pair d'un homme qui sauve sa patrie.” To be 
sure, it was not what is usually termed the leading 
article of the month. It did not occupv that post of 
honor which, hitherto, has been so moderately filled 
by ‘‘Puffer Hopkins.” But it took precedence of 
some exceedingly beautiful stanzas by Professor 
Longfellow, and stood second only to a very serious 
account of a supper which, however well it might 
have suited the taste of an Ariel, would scarcely 
have feasted the Anakim, or satisfied the appetite 
of a Grandgousier. The supper was, or might have 
been, a good thing. The poem which succeeded it 
1s not; nor can we imagine what has induced Messrs. 
Curry & Co. to be at the trouble of its republication. 
We are vexed with these gentlemen for having thrust 
this affair the second time before us. They have 
placed us in a predicament we dislike. In the pages 
of “Arcturus” the poem did not come necessarily 
under the eye of the magazine critic. There is a 
tacitly-understood courtesy about these matters—a 
courtesy upon which we need not comment. The 
contributed papers in any one journal of the class of 
‘“‘Arcturus”’ are not considered as debateable by any 


* Wakondah; The Master of Life. A Poem. George L. 
Curry & Co.: New York. 


CORNELIUS MATHEWS 67 


one other. General propositions, under the editorial 
head, are rightly made the subject of discussion; but 
in speaking of ‘‘Wakondah,” for example, in the 
pages of our own Magazine, we should have felt as if 
making an occasion. Now, upon our first perusal 
of the poem in question, we were both astonished 
and grieved that we could say, honestly, very 
little in its praise:—astonished, for by some means, 
not just now altogether intelligible to ourselves, we 
had become imbued with the idea of high poetical 
talent in Mr. Mathews:—grieved, because, under the 
circumstances of his position as editor of one of the 
very best journals in the country, we had been sin- 
cerely anxious to think well of his abilities. More- 
over, we felt that to speak ill of them, under any 
circumstances whatever, would be to subject our- 
selves to the charge of envy or jealousy, on the part 
of those who do not personally know us. We, there- 
fore, rejoiced that ‘‘Wakondah” was not a topic we 
were called upon to discuss. But the poem is re- 
published, and placed upon our table, and these 
very ‘“‘circumstances of position’’ which restrained 
us in the first place, render it a positive duty that we 
speak distinctly in the second. 

And very distinctly shall we speak. In fact, this 
effusion is a dilemma whose horns goad us into frank- 
ness and candor—‘‘c’est un malheur,’’ to use the 
words of Victor Hugo, ‘‘d’ou on ne pourrait se tirer 
par des periphrases, par des quemadmodums et des 
verumenimveros.’ If we mention it at all, we are 
forced to employ the language of that region where, 
as Addison has it, ‘‘they sell the best fish and speak 
the plainest English.” ‘‘Wakondah,”’ then, from 
beginning to end, is trash. With the trivial excep- 
tions which we shall designate, it has no merit what- 
ever; while its faults, more numerous than the leaves 


68 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


of Valombrosa, are of that rampant class which, if 
any schoolboy could be found so uninformed as to 
commit them, any schoolboy should be remorse- 
lessly flogged for committing. 

The story, or as the epics have it, the argument, 
although brief, is by no means particularly easy of 
comprehension. The design seems to be based 
upon a passage in Mr. Irving’s ‘‘Astoria.’”’ He tells 
us that the Indians who inhabit the Chippewyan 
range of mountains, call it the ‘‘Crest of the World,” 
and ‘‘think that Wakondah, or the Master of Life, 
as they designate the Supreme Being, has his resi- 
dence among these aerial heights.”” Upon this hint 
Mr. Mathews has proceeded. He introduces us 
to Wakondah standing in person upon a mountain 
top. He describes his appearance, and thinks that 
a Chinook would be frightened to behold it. He 
causes the ‘* Master of Life” to make a speech, which 
is addressed, generally, to things at large, and par- 
ticularly to the neighboring Woods, Cataracts, 
Rivers, Pinnacles, Steeps, and Lakes—not to men- 
tion an Earthquake. But all these (and, we think, 
judiciously) turn a deaf ear to the oration, which, to 
be plain, is scarcely equal to a second-rate Pianki- 
tank stump speech. In fact, it is a barefaced at- 
tempt at animal magnetism, and the mountains, &c., 
do no more than show its potency in resigning them- 
selves to sleep, as they do. 


Then shone Wakondah’s dreadful eyes. 


—then he becomes very indignant, and accordingly 
launches forth into speech the second—with which 
the delinquents are afflicted, with occasional brief 
interruptions from the poet, in proper person, until 
the conclusion of the poem. 

The subject of the two orations we shall be pers 


CORNELIUS MATHEWS 69 


mitted to sum up compendiously in the one term 
‘“‘rigmarole.’’ But we do not mean to say that our 
compendium is not an improvement, and a very 
considerable one, upon the speeches themselves— 
which, taken altogether, are the queerest, and the 
most rhetorical, not to say the most miscellaneous 
orations we ever remember to have listened to out- 
side of an Arkansas House of Delegates. In saying 
this we mean what we say. We intend no joke. 
Were it possible, we would quote the whole poem in 
support of our opinion. But as this is not possible, 
and, moreover, as we presume Mr. Mathews has not 
been so negligent as to omit securing his valuable 
property by a copyright, we must be contented 
with a few extracts here and there at random, with 
a few comments equally so. But we have already 
hinted that there were really one or two words to be 
said of this effusion in the way of commendation, ana 
these one or two words might as well be said now as 
hereafter. The poem thus commences— 


The moon ascends the vaulted sky to-night; 
With a slow motion full of pomp ascends, 
But, mightier than the moon that o’er it bends 
A form is dwelling on the mountain height 
That boldly intercepts the struggling light 
With darkness nobler than the planet’s fire, 
A gloom and dreadful grandeur that aspire 
To match the cheerful Heaven’s far-shining might. 


If we were to shut our eyes to the repetition of 
*‘might,”’ (which, in its various inflections, is a pet 
word with our author, and lugged in upon all oc- 
casions,) and to the obvious imitation of Long- 
fellow’s Hymn to the Night, in the second line of 
this stanza, we should be justified in calling it good. 
The ‘‘darkness nobler than the planet’s fire” is 
certainly good. The general conception of the 


7O EDGAR ALLAN POE 


colossal figure on the mountain summit, relieved 
against the full moon, would be unquestionably 
grand were it not for the bullish phraseology by 
which the conception is rendered, in a great measure, 
abortive. The moon is described as “‘ascending,”’ 
and its ‘‘motion”’ is referred to, while we have the 
standing figure continuously intercepting its light. 
That the orb would soon pass from behind the figure, 
is a physical fact which the purpose of the poet re- 
quired to be left out of sight, and which scarcely 
any other language than that which he has actually 
employed would have succeeded in forcing upon the 
reader’s attention. With all these defects, however, 
the passage, especially as an opening passage, is 
one of high merit. Looking carefully for something 
else to be commended, we find at length the lines— 


Lo! where our foe up through these vales ascends 
Fresh from the embraces of the swelling sea, 
A glorious, white and shining Deity. 

Upon our strength his deep blue eye he bends, 

With threatenings full of thought and steadfast ends; 
While desolation from his nostril breathes 
His glittering rage he scornfully unsheathes 

And to the startled air its splendor lends, 


This again, however, is worth only qualified com- 
mendation. ‘The first six lines preserve the personi- 
fication (that of a ship) sufficiently weil; but, in the 
seventh and eighth, the author suffers the image 
to slide into that of a warrior unsheathing his sword. 
still there is force in these concluding verses, and we 
begin to fancy that this is saying a very great deal 
for the author of ‘‘ Puffer Hopkins.”’ 

_ The best stanza in the poem (there are thirty-four 
in all) is the thirty-third. 


CORNELIUS MATHEWS 71 


No cloud was on the moon, yet on his brow 
A deepening shadow fell, and on his knees 
That shook like tempest-stricken mountain trees 
His heavy head descended sad and low 


Like a high city smitten by the blow 
Which secret earthquakes strike and topling falls 
With all tts arches, towers, and cathedrals 

In swift and unconjectured overthrow. 


This is, positively, not bad. The first line itali- 
cized is bold and vigorous, both in thought and ex- 
pression; and the last four (although by no means 
original) convey a striking picture. But then the 
whole idea, in its general want of keeping, is pre- 
posterous. What is more absurd than the concep- 
tion of a man’s head descending to his knees, as here 
described—the thing could not be done by an Indian 
juggler or a man of gum-caoutchouc—and what is 
more inappropriate than the resemblance attempted 
to be drawn between a szngle head descending, and 
the znunumerable pinnacles of a falling city? It is 
difficult to understand, en passant, why Mr. Mathews 
has thought proper to give “cathedrals” a quantity 
which does not belong to it, or to write “uncon- 
jectured’’ when the rhythm might have been ful- 
filled by ‘‘unexpected,” and when “unexpected” 
would have fully conveyed the meaning which “un- 
conjectured’’ does not. : 

By dint of farther microscopic survey, we are 
enabled to point out one, and alas, only one more 
good line in the poem. 


Green dells that into silence stretch away 


contains a richly poetical thought, melodiously em- 
bodied. We only refrain, however, from declaring, 
flatly, that the line is not the property of Mr. 
Mathews, because we have not at hand the volume 


"2 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


from which we believe it to be stolen. We quote the 
sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth stanzas in full. 
They will serve to convey some faint idea of the 
general poem. ‘The italics are our own. 


The spirit lowers and speaks: “ Tremble ye wild Woods 
Ye Cataracts! your organ-voices sound! 
Deep Crags, in earth by massy tenures bound, 
Oh, Earthquake, level flat! The peace that broods 
Above this world, and steadfastly eludes 
Your power, howl Winds and break; the peace that mocks 
Dismay ’mid silent streams and voiceless rocks— 
Through wildernesses, cliffs, and solitudes. 


“ Night-shadowed Rivers—lift your dusky hands 
And clap them harshly with a sullen roar! 
Ye thousand Pinnacles and Steeps deplore 
The glory that departs! above you stands, 
Ye Lakes with azure waves and snowy strands, 
A power that utters forth his loud behest 
Till mountain, lake and river shall attest, 
The puissance of a Master’s large commands.” 


So spake the Spirit with a wide-cast look 
Of bounteous power and cheerful majesty; 
As if he caught a sight of either sea 
And all the subject realm between: then shook 
His brandished arms; his stature scarce could brook 
Its confine; swelling wide, it seemed to grow 
As grows a cedar on a mountain’s brow 
By the mad air in ruffling breezes took/ 


The woods are deaf and will not be aroused— 
The mountains are asleep, they hear him not, 
Nor from deep-founded silence can be wrought, 

Tho’ herded bison on their steeps have browsed: 

Beneath their banks in darksome stillness housed 
The rivers loiter like a calm-bound sea; 

In anchored nuptials to dumb apathy 

Cirff, wilderness and solitude are spoused, 


CORNELIUS MATHEWS 73 


Let us endeavor to translate this gibberish, by way 
of ascertaining its import, if possible. Or, rather, 
let us state the stanzas, in substance. The spirit 
lowers, that is to say, grows angry, and speaks. He 
calls upon the Wild Woods to tremble, and upon the 
Cataracts to sound their voices which have the tone 
of anorgan. He addresses, then, an Earthquake, or 
perhaps Earthquake in general, and requests it to 
level flat all the Deep Crags which are bound by 
massy tenures in earth—a request, by the way, 
which any sensible Earthquake must have re- 
garded as tautological, since it is difficult to level 
anything otherwise than flat:;—Mr. Mathews, how- 
ever, is no doubt the best judge of flatness in the 
abstract, and may have peculiar ideas respecting it. 
But to proceed with the Spirit. Turning to the 
Winds, he enjoins them to howi and break the peace 
that broods above this world and steadfastly eludes 
their power—the same peace that mocks a Dismay 
"mid streams, rocks, et cetera. He now speaks to 
the night-shadowed Rivers, and commands them to 
lift their dusky hands, and clap them harshly with a 
sullen roar—and as roaring with one’s hands is not 
the easiest matter in the world, we can only conclude 
that the Rivers here reluctantly disobeyed the in- 
junction. Nothing daunted, however, the Spirit, ad- 
dressing a thousand Pinnacles and Steeps, desires 
them to deplore the glory that departs, or is depart- 
ing—and we can almost fancy that we see the Pin- 
nacles deploring it upon the spot. The Lakes—at 
least such of them as possess azure waves and snowy 
strands—then come in for their share of the oration. 
They are called upon to observe—to take notice— 
that above them stands no ordinary character—no 
Piankitank stump orator, or anything of that sort 
—but a Power;—a power, in short, to use the exact 


“4 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


words of Mr. Mathews, “that utters forth his loud 
behest, till mountain, lake and river shall attest the 
puissance of a Master’s large commands.” Utters 
forth is no doubt somewhat supererogatory, since 
“to utter’ is of itself to emit, or send forth; but as 
“the Power’ appears to be somewhat excited he 
should be forgiven such mere errors of speech. We 
cannot, however, pass over his boast about uttering 
forth his loud behest z#l1 mountains, lake and river 
shall obey him—for the fact is that his threat is 
vox et preterea nihil, like the countryman’s nightin- 
gale in Catullus; the issue showing that the moun- 
tains, lakes and rivers—all very sensible creatures— 
go fast asleep upon the spot, and pay no attention to 
his rigmarole whatever. Upon the “large com- 
mands’”’ it is not our intention to dwell. The phrase 
is a singularly mercantile one to be in the mouth of 
“a Power.”’ It is not impossible, however, that Mr. 
Mathews himself is 


—busy in the cotton trade 
And sugar line. 


But to resume. We were originally told that the 
Spirit “lowered’’ and spoke, and in truth his entire 
speech is a scold at Creation; yet stanza the eighth is 
so forgetful as to say that he spoke “with a wide- 
cast look of bounteous power and cheerful majesty.” 
Be this point as it may, he now shakes his brandished 
arms, and, swelling out, seems to grow— 


As grows a cedar on a mountain’s top— 
By the mad air in ruffling breezes took 


—~or as swells a turkey-gobbler; whose image the poet 
unquestionably had in his mind’s eye when he pen- 
ned the words about the ruffled cedar. As for took 
instead of taken—why not say tuk at once? We 


CORNELIUS MATHEWS Ee 


have heard of chaps vot vas tuk up for sheep-stealing, 
and we know of one or two that ought to be tuk up 
for murder of the Queen’s English. 

We shall never get on. Stanza the ninth assures 
us that the woods are deaf and will not be aroused, 
that the mountains are asleep and so forth—all 
which Mr. Mathews might have anticipated. But 
the rest he could not have foreseen. He could not 
have foreknown that “the rivers, housed beneath 
their banks in darksome stillness,’’ would “loiter like 
a calm-bound sea,’’ and still less could he have been 
aware, unless informed of the fact that “cliff, wilder- 
ness and solitude would be spoused in anchored nup- 
tials to dumb apathy!’ Good Heavens—no!—nobody 
could have anticipated that! Now, Mr. Mathews, 
we put it to you as to a man of veracity—what does 
it all mean? | 


As when in times to startle and revere, 


This line, of course, is an accident on the part of our 
author. At the time of writing it he could not have 
remembered 


To haunt, to startle and waylay. 


Here is another accident of imitation; for seriously, 
we do not mean to assert that it is anything more— 


I urged the dark red hunter in his quest 

Of pard or panther with a gloomy zest; 

And while through darkling woods they swiftly fare 
Two seeming creatures of the oak-shadowed atr, 

I sped the game and fired the follower’s breast. 


The line italicized we have seen quoted by some of 
our daily critics as beautiful; and so, barring the 


‘“‘oak-shadowed air,” itis. In the meantime Camp- 
bell, in ‘‘Gertrude of Wyoming,”’ has the words 


—the hunter and the deer a shade. 


76 EDGAR ALLAN FOE 


Campbell stole the idea from our own Freneau, wh 
has the line 


The hunter and the deer a shade. 


Between the two, Mr. Mathews’ claim to originality, 
at this point, will, very possibly, fall to the ground. 

It appears to us that the author of ‘‘Wakondah”’ 
is either very innocent or very original about matters 
of versification. His stanza is an ordinary one. 
If we are not mistaken, it is that employed by Camp- 
bell in his ‘‘Gertrude of Wyoming ’’—-a favorite poem 
of our author’s. At all events it is composed of 
pentameters whose rhymes alternate by a simple 
and fixed rule. But our poet’s deviations from this 
rule are so many and so unusually picturesque, that 
we scarcely know what to think of them. Some- 
times he introduces an Alexandrine at the close of a 
stanza; and here we have no right to quarrel with him. 
It is not usual in this metre; but still he may do it if 
he pleases. To put an Alexandrine in the middle, 
or at the beginning, of one of these stanzas is droll 
to say no more. See stanza third, which com- 
mences with the verse 


Upon his brow a garland of the woods he wears, 


and stanza twenty-eight, where the last line but one is 


_ And rivers singing all aloud tho’ still unseen. 


Stanza the seventh begins thus 
The Spirit lowers and speaks—tremble ye Wild Woods! 


Here it must be observed that ‘‘wild woods” is not 
meant for a double rhyme. If scanned on the 
fingers (and we presume Mr. Mathews is in the prac- 
tice of scanning thus) the line is a ligitimate Alex- 
andrine. Nevertheless, it cannot be read. It is like 
nothing under the sun; except, perhaps, Sir Philip 


CORNELIUS MATHEWS 79 


Sidney’s attempt at English Hexameter in his 
‘““Arcadia.’”’ Some one or two of his verses we re- 
member. For example— 


So to the | woods Love |runs as {well as|rides to the] 
palace; 

Neither he | bears reve | rence to a| prince nor | pity to a| 
beggar, 

But like a| point in the | midst of a| circle is | still of a| 
nearness. 


_ With the aid of an additional spondee or dactyl 
Mr. Mathews’ very odd verse might be scanned in the 
same manner, and would, in fact, be a legitimate 
Hexameter: 


The Spi | rit lowers | and speaks | tremble ye | wild woods. 


Sometimes our poet takes even a higher flight and 
drops a foot, or a half-foot, or, for the matter of that, 
a foot and a half. Here, for example, is a very 
singular verse to be introduced in a pentameter 
rhythm— 


Then shone Wakondah’s dreadful eyes. 


Here another— 


Yon full-orbed fire shall cease to shine. é 
Here, again, are lines in which the rhythm de- 
mands an accent on impossible syllables. 


But ah winged with what agonies and pangs. ... 
Swiftly before me nor care I how vast. ... 

I see vistons denied to mortal eyes. ... 

Uplifted longer 7m heaven’s western glow. ... 


But these are trifles. Mr. Mathews is young and 
we take it for granted that he will improve. In the 
meantime what does he mean by spelling lose, loose, 
and its (the possessive pronoun) 7t’s—re-iterated 
instances of which fashions are to be found passim in 


78 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


‘‘Wakondah”? What does he mean by writing 
dare, the present, for dared, the perfect ?—see stanza 
the twelfth. And, as we are now in the catachetical 
vein, we may as well conclude our dissertation at 
once with a few other similar queries. 

What do you mean, then, Mr. Mathews, by 


A sudden silence like a tempest fell? 


What do you mean by a ‘‘quivered stream”’; ‘‘a 
shapeless gloom’’; a ‘‘habitable wish’; ‘‘natural 
blood”; ‘‘oak-shadowed air’’; ‘‘customary peers” 
and ‘‘thunderous noises?” 

What do you mean by 


A sorrow mightier than the midnight skies? 
What do you mean by 
A bulk that swallows up the sea-blue sky? 


Are you not aware that calling the sky as blue as 
the sea, is like saying of the snow that it is as white 
as a sheet of paper? 

What do you mean, in short, by 


Its feathers darker than a thousand fears? 


Is not this something like ‘‘blacker than a dozen 
and a half of chimney-sweeps and a stack of black 
cats,’ and are not the whole of these illustrative 
observations of yours somewhat upon the plan of 
that of the witness who described a certain article 
stolen as being of the size and shape of a bit of chalk? 
What do you mean by them, we say? 

And here, notwithstanding our earnest wish to 
satisfy the author of Wakondah, it is indispensable 
that we bring our notice of the poem toa close. We 
feel grieved that our observations have been so much 
at random;—but at random, after all, is it alone 


CORNELIUS MATHEWS 79 


possible to convey either the letter or the spirit of 
that, which, a mere jumble of incongruous nonsense, 
has neither beginning, middle, nor end. We should 
be delighted to proceed—but how? to applaud— 
but what? Surely not this trumpery declamation, 
this maudlin sentiment, this metaphor run-mad, this 
twaddling verbiage, this halting and doggerel rhythm, 
this unintelligible rant and cant! “Slid, if these be 
your passados and montantes, we'll have none of 
them.’”’ Mr. Mathews, you have clearly mistaken 
your vocation, and your effusion as littie deserves 
the title of poem, (oh sacred name!) as did the rocks 
of the royal forest of Fontainbleau that of “mes 
déserts’’ bestowed upon them by Francis the First. 
In bidding you adieu we commend to your careful 
consideration the remark of M. Timon, “que le 
Ministre de IlInstruction Publique dowt lut-méme 
savoir parler Francats.”’ 


80 EDGAR ALLAN POF, 


WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS* 


R. SIMMS, we believe, made his first, or 
M nearly his first, appearance before an 
American audience with a small volume 
entitled ‘ Martin Faber,’’ an amplification of a much 
shorter fiction. He had some difficulty in getting it 
published, but the Harpers finally undertook it, and 
it did credit to their judgment. It was well re- 
ceived both by the public and the more discrimina- 
tive few, although some of the critics objected that 
the story was an imitation of “ Miserrimus,”’ a very 
powerful fiction by the author of “ Pickwick Abroad.” 
The original tale, however—the germ of “Martin | 
Faber’’—was written long before the publication of 
“Miserrimus.” But independently of this fact, 
there is not the slightest ground for the charge of 
imitation. The thesis and incidents of the two © 
works are totally dissimilar;—the idea of resem- 
blance arises only from the absolute identity of effect 
wrought by both. 

“Martin Faber’’ was succeeded, at short intervals, 
by a great number and variety of fictions, some 
brief, but many of the ordinary novel size. Among 
these we may notice “Guy Rivers,”’ “The Partisan,” 
“The Yemassee,’’ “ Mellichampe,’’ “ Beauchampe,” 
and “Richard Hurdis.’”’ The last two were issued 
anonymously, the author wishing to ascertain 
whether the success of his books (which was great) 

* Wiley & Putnam’s Library of American Books. No. IV. 


The Wigwam and the Cabin. By William Gilmore Simms, 
First Series. 


WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 81 


had anything to do with his mere name as the writer 
of previous works. The result proved that popular- 
ity, in Mr. Simms’ case, arose solely from intrinsic 
merit, for ‘“Beauchampe”’ and “Richard Hurdis”’ 
_were the most popular of his fictions, and excited 
very general attention and curiosity. ‘Border 
Beagles” was another of his anonymous novels, 
published with the same end in view, and, although 
disfigured by some instances of bad taste, was even 
more successful than ‘“ Richard Hurdis.”’ 

The “bad taste” of the “Border Beagles” was 
more particularly apparent in “The Partisan,’ 
“The Yemassee,’? and. one or two other of the 
author’s earlier works, and displayed itself most 
offensively in a certain fondness for the purely dis- 
gusting or repulsive, where the intention was or 
should have been merely the horrible. The writer 
evinced a strange propensity for minute details of 
human and brute suffering, and even indulged at 
times in more unequivocal obscenities. His English, 
too, was, in his efforts, exceedingly objectionable— 
verbose, involute, and not unfrequently ungram- 
matical. He was especially given to pet words, 
of which we remember at present only “hug,” “cotl,”” 
and the compound “ old-time,” and introduced them 
upon all occasions. Neither was he at this period 
particularly dexterous in the conduct of his stories. 
His improvement, however, was rapid at all these 
points, although, on the two first counts of our in- 
dictment, there is still abundant room for im- 
provement. But whatever may have been his early 
defects, or whatever are his present errors, there can 
be no doubt that from the very beginning he gave 
evidence of genius, and that of no common order. 
His “Martin Faber,” in our opinion, 1s a more 
forcible story than its supposed prototype ‘“‘ Miser- 

Vou, VI--é 


82 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


rimus.’’ The difference in the American reception 
of the two is to be referred to the fact (we blush while 
recording it,) that “ Miserrimus’’ was understood to 
be the work of an Englishman, and ‘‘ Martin Faber’’ 
was known to be the composition of an American 
as yet unaccredited in our Republic of Letters. 
The fiction of Mr. Simms gave indication, we repeat, 
of genius, and that of no common order. Had he 
been even a Yankee, this genius would have been 
rendered immediately manifest to his countrymen, 
but unhappily (perhaps) he was a southerner, and 
united the southern pride—the southern dislike to 
the making of bargains—with the southern supine- 
ness and general want of tact in all matters relating 
to the making of money. His book, therefore, de- 
pended entirely upon its own intrinsic value and re- 
sources, but with these it made its way in the end. 
The ‘“‘intrinsic value” consisted first of a very © 
vigorous imagination in the conception of the story: 
secondly, in artistic skill manifested in its conduct; 
thirdly, in general vigor, life, movement—the 
whole resulting in Cccp interest on the part of the 
reader. These high qualities Mr. Simms has carried 
with him in his subsequent books; and they are 
qualities which, above all others, the fresh and 
vigorous intellect of America should and does esteem. 
It may be said, upon the whole, that while there are 
several of our native writers who excel the author of 
‘“‘Martin Faber” at particular points, there is, never- 
theless, not one who surpasses him in the aggregate 
of the higher excellences of fiction. We confidently 
expect him to do much for the lighter literature of his 
country. 

The volume now before us has a title which may 
mislead the reader. ‘‘The Wigwam and the Cabin” 
is merely a generic phrase, intended to designate the 


WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 83 


subject matter of a series of short tales, most of 
which have first seen the light in the Annuals. 
‘‘The material employed,”’ says the author, ‘‘will be 
found to illustrate in large degree, the border history 
of the south. I can speak with confidence of the 
general truthfulness of its treatment. The life of the 
planter, the squatter, the Indian, the negro, the bold 
and hardy pioneer, and the vigorous yeoman—these 
are the subjects. In their delineation I have mostly 
drawn from living portraits, and, in frequent 
instances, from actual scenes and circumstances 
within the memories of men.”’ 

All the tales in this collection have merit, and the 
first has merit of a very peculiar kind. ‘‘Grayling, 
or Murder will Out,” is the title. The story waswell | 
received in England, but on this fact no opinion can 
be safely based. ‘‘The Athenzum,” we believe, 
or some other of the London weekly critical journals, 
having its attention called (no doubt through per- 
sonal influence) to Carey & Hart’s beautiful annual 
‘“The Gift,’ found it convenient, in the course of its 
notice, to speak at length of some one particular 
article, and ‘‘ Murder Will Out” probably arrested the 
attention of the sub-editor who was employed in so 
trivial a task as the patting on the head an American 
book—arrested his attention first from its title, 
(murder being a taking theme with the cockney,) 
and secondly, from its details of southern forest 
scenery. Large quotations were made, as a matter 
of course, and very ample commendation bestowed— 
the whole criticism proving nothing, in our opinion, 
but that the critic had not read a single syllable of 
the story. The critique, however, had at least, the 
good effect of calling American attention to the 
fact that an American might possibly do a decent 
thing, (provided the possibility were first admitted 


B4 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


by the British sub-editors,) and the result was first, 
that many persons read, and secondly, that all 
persons admired the excellent story in ‘The Gift’ 
that had actually been called ‘readable’ by one of 
the English newspapers. ”’ a 

Now had ‘‘Murder Will Out” been a much ~ 
worse story than was ever written by Professor 
Ingraham, still, under the circumstances, we pa- 
triotic and independent Americans would have 
declared it inimitable; but, by some species of odd 
accident, it happened to deserve all that the British 
sub-sub had condescended to say of it, on the 
strength of a guess as to what it was all about. 
It is really an admirable tale, nobly conceived, and 
skilfully carried into execution—the best ghost- 
story ever written by an American—for we presume 
that this is the ultimate extent of commendation 
to which we, as an humble American, dare go. 

The other stories of volume do credit to the 
author’s abilities and display their peculiarities in 
a strong light, but there is no one of them so good 
as ‘‘Murder Will Out.” 


JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 85 


JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL* 


y N FAAS have we Americans accomplished in 
the way of Satire? “The Vision of 
Rubeta,”’ by Laughton Osborn, is prob- 

ably our best composition of the kind: but, in saying 
this, we intend no excessive commendation. Trum- 
bull’s clumsy and imitative work is scarcely worth 
mention—and then we have Halleck’s ‘‘Croak- 
ers,” local and ephemeral—but what is there 
besides? Park Benjamin has written a _ clever 
address, with the title “Infatuation,’’ and Holmes 
has an occasional scrap, piquant enough in its 
way—but we can think of nothing more that can 
be fairly called “satire.’’ Some matters we have 
produced, to be sure, which were excellent in the 
way of burlesque—(the poems of William Ellery 
Channing, for example)—without meaning a syllable 
that was not utterly solemn and serious. Odes, 
ballads, songs, sonnets, epics and epigrams, pos- 
sessed of this unintentional excellence, we should 
have no difficulty in designating by the dozen; 
but in the particular of direct and obvious satire, 
it cannot be denied that we are unaccountably 
deficient. 

It has been suggested that this deficiency arises 
from the want of a suitable field for satirical display. 
In England, it is said, satire abounds, because the 
people there find a proper target in the aristocracy, 
whom they (the people) regard as a distinct race 
with whom they have little in common; relishing 


* A Fable for the Critics. New York: George P. Putnam. 


86 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


even the most virulent abuse of the upper classes 
with a gusto undiminished by any feeling that. they 
(the people) have any concern in it. In Russia, 
or Austria, on the other hand, it is urged, satire is 
unknown; because there is danger in touching 
the aristocracy, and self-satire would Le odious to 
the mass. In America, also, the people who write 
are, it is maintained, the people who read:—thus 
in satirizing the people we satirize only ourselves, 
and are never in condition to sympathize with 
the satire. | 

All this is more verisimilar than true. It is 
forgotten that no individual considers himself as 
one of the mass. Each person, in his own estimate, 
is the pivot on which all the rest of the world spins 
round. We may abuse the people by wholesale, 
and yet with a clear conscience, so far as regards any 
compunction for offending any one from among the - 
multitude of which that “people” is composed. 
Every one of the crowd will cry ‘‘Encore/—give it 
to them, the vagabonds!—it serves them right.” 
It seems to us that, in America, we have refused 
to encourage satire—not because what we have 
had touches us too nearly—but because it has been 
too pointless to touch us at all. Itsnamby-pamby- 
ism has arisen, in part, from the general want, 
among our men of letters, of that minute polish— 
of that skill in details—which, in combination 
with natural sarcastic power, satire, more than any 
other form of literature, so imperatively demands. 
In part, also, we may attribute our failure to the 
colonial sin of imitation. We content ourselves— 
at this point not less supinely than at all others— 
with doing what not only has been done before, 
but what, however well done, has yet been done ad 
nauseam. We should not be able to endure infinite 


Wane 


iN 


ANAND 
‘ 7 


JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 


sre i t 





THE LIBRARY 


a se as 
| DRIVERSITY AE tet GES 





JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 87 


repetitions of even absolute excellence; but what 
is ““McFingal’’ more than a faint echo from “ Hudi- 
bras’ ?—and what is ‘‘The Vision of Rubeta”’ 
more than a vast gilded swill-trough overflowing 
with Dunciad and water? Although we are not 
all Archilochuses, however—although we have few 
pretensions to the »xeqv7es caxfo—although, in short, 
we are no Satirists ourselves—there can be no ques- 
tion that we answer sufficiently well as subjects 
for satire. 

‘““The Vision”’ is bold enough—if we leave out of 
sight its anonymous issue—and bitter enough, 
and witty enough, if we forget its pitiable punning 
on names—and long enough (Heaven knows) and 
well constructed and decently versified; but it fails 
in the principal element of all satire—sarcasm— 
because the intention to be sarcastic (as in the 
“English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,’’ and in all 
the more classical satires) is permitted to render 
itself manifest. The malevolence appears. The 
author is never very severe, because he is at no time 
particularly cool. We laugh not so much at his 
victims as at himself, for letting them put him in 
such a passion. And wherea deeper sentiment than 
mirth is excited—where it is pity or contempt 
that we are made to feel—the feeling is too often 
reflected, in its object, from the satirized to the 
satirist—with whom we sympathize in the discom- 
fort of his animosity. Mr. Osborn has not many 
superiors in downright invective; but this is the 
awkward left arm of the satiric Muse. That 
satire alone is worth talking about which at least 
appears to be the genial, good-humored outpouring 
of irrepressible merriment. 

“The Fable for the Critics’ just issued, has 
not the name of its author on the title-page; 


88 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


and but for some slight fore-knowledge of the 
literary opinions, likes, dislikes, whims, preju- 
dices and crotchets of Mr. James Russell Lowell, 
we should have had much difficulty in attributing 
so very loose a brochure to him. The “ Fable’’ is es- 
sentially ‘‘loose’’—ill-conceived and feebly exe- 
cuted, as well in detail as in general. Some good 
hints and some sparkling witticisms do not serve 
to compensate us for its rambling plot (if plot it can 
be called) and for the want of artistic finish so par- 
ticularly noticeable throughout the work—especially 
in its versification. In Mr. Lowell’s prose efforts we 
have before observed a certain disjointedness, but 
never, until now, in his verse—and we confess some 
surprise at his putting forth so unpolished a per- 
formance. The author of “The Legend of Brittany” 
(which is decidedly the noblest poem, of the same 
length, written by an American) could not do a. 
better thing than to take the advice of those who 
mean him well, in spite of his fanaticism, and leave 
prose, with satiric verse, to those who are better 
able to manage them; while he contents himself 
with that class of poetry for which, and for which 
alone, he seems to have an especial vocation—the 
poetry of sentiment. ‘This, to be sure, is not the 
very loftiest order of verse; for it is far inferior to 
either that of the imagination or that of the passions 
—but it is the loftiest region in which Mr. Lowell can 
get his breath without difficulty. 

Our primary objection to this “Fable for the 
Critics”? has reference to a point which we have 
already touched in a general way. ‘The malev- 
olence appears.’”” We laugh not so much at the 
author’s victims as at himself, for letting them put 
him in such a passion. The very title of the book 
shows the want of a due sense in respect to the 


JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 89 


satirical essence, sarcasm. This “fable’’—this 
severe ]2sson—is meant “for the Critics.” ‘Ah!’ 
we say to ourselves at once—‘‘we see how it 
is. Mr. L. is a poor devil poet, and some critic has 
been reviewing him, and making him feel very un- 
comfortable; whereupon, bearing in mind that Lord 
Byron, when similarly assailed, avenged his wrongs 
in a satire which he called ‘English Bards and 
Scotch Reviewers,’ he (Mr. Lowell) imitative as 
usual, has been endeavoring to get redress in a 
parallel manner—by a satire with a parallel title— 
‘A Fable for the Critics.’”’ 

_ All this the reader says to himself; and all this tells 
against Mr. L. in two ways—first, by suggesting un- 
lucky comparisons between Byron and Lowell, and, 
secondly, by reminding us of the various criticisms, 
in which we have been amused (rather ill-naturedly) 
at seeing Mr. Lowell ‘used up.” 

The title starts us on this train of thought, and the 
satire sustains usin it. Every reader versed in our 
literary gossip, is at once put dessous des cartes as to 
the particular provocation which engendered the 
‘Fable.’ Miss Margaret Fuller, some time ago, 
in a silly and conceited piece of Transcendentalism, 
which she called an ‘‘Essay on American Literature,”’ 
or something of that kind, had the consummate 
pleasantry, after selecting from the list of American 
poets, Cornelius Mathews and William Ellery Chan- 
ning, for especial commendation, to speak of Long- 
fellow as a booby, and of Lowell as so wretched a 
poetaster ‘‘as to be disgusting even to his best 
friends.”? All this Miss Fuller sazd, if not in our 
precise words, still in words quite as much to the 
purpose. Why she said it, Heaven only knows— 
unless it was because she was Margaret Fuller, and 
wished to be taken for nobody else. Messrs. Long: 


go EDGAR ALLAN POE 


fellow and Lowell, so pointedly picked out for abuse 
as the worst of our poets, are, upon the whole, 
perhaps, our best—although Bryant, and one or two 
others are scarcely inferior. As for the two favorites, 
selected just as pointedly for laudation, by Miss 
F.—it is really difficult to think of them, in con- 
nexion with poetry, without laughing. Mr. Mathews 
once wrote some sonnets ‘‘On Man,’ and Mr. Chan- 
ning some lines on ‘‘A Tin Can,” or something of 
that kind—and if the former gentleman be not the 
very worst poet that ever existed on the face of the 
earth, it is only because he is not quite so bad as the 
latter. ‘To speak algebraically :—NMr. M. is execrable, 
but Mr. C. is x plus I-ecrable. 

Mr. Lowell has obviously aimed his ‘‘Fable” at 
Miss Fuller’s head, in the first instance, with an eye 
to its ricochét-ing so as to knock down Mr. Mathews 
in the second. Miss F. is first introduced as Miss — 
F , rhyming to ‘“‘cooler,” and afterwards as 
“‘Miranda’”’; while poor Mr. M. is brought in upon all 
occasions, head and shoulders; and now and then a 
sharp thing, although never very original, is said of 
them or at them; but all the true satiric effect wrought, 
is that produced by the satirist against himself. 
The reader is all the time smiling to think that so 
unsurpassable a—(what shall we call her?—we wish 
to be civil,) a transcendentalist as Miss Fuller, 
should, by such a criticism, have had the power to 
put a respectable poet in such a passion. 

As for the plot or conduct of this Fable, the less we 
say of it the better. It is so weak—so flimsy—so ill 
put together—as to be not worth the trouble of 
understanding :—something, as usual, about Apollo 
and Daphne. Is there uo originality on the face of 
the earth? Mr. Lowell’s total want of it is shown at 
all points—very especially in his preface of rhyming 





JAMES RUSSELL. LOWELL or 


verse written without distinction by lines or initial 
capitals, (a hackneyed matter, originating, we be- 
lieve, with Frazer’s Magazine:)—very especially 
also, in his long continuations of some particular 
trhyme—a fashion introduced, if we remember 
aright, by Leigh Hunt, more than twenty-five years 
ago, in his “‘ Feast of the Poets” —which, by the way, 
has been Mr. L.’s model in many respects. 
Although ill-temper has evidently engendered 
this ‘‘Fable,”’ it is by no means a satire throughout. 
Much of it is devoted to panegyric—but our readers 
would be cuite puzzled to know the grounds of the 
author’s laudations, in many cases, unless made 
acquainted with a fact which we think it as well 
they should be informed of at once. Mr. Lowell is 
one of the most rabid of the Abolition fanatics; and 
no Southerner who does not wish to be insulted, and 
at the same time revolted by a bigotry the most ob- 
stinately blind and deaf, should ever touch a volume 
by this author.* His fanaticism about slavery is a 
mere local outbreak of the same innate wrong-head- 
edness which, if he owned slaves, would manifest 
itself in atrocious ill-treatment of them, with mur- 
der of any abolitionist who should endeavor to set 
them free. A fanatic of Mr. L.’s species, is simply a 
fanatic for the sake of fanaticism, and must be a 
fanatic in whatever circumstances you place him. 
His prejudices on the topic of slavery break out 
everywhere in his present book. Mr. L. has not the 
common honesty to speak well, even in a literary 
sense, of any man who is not a ranting abolitionist. 
* This “Fable for the Critics’—this literary satire—this 


benevolent jeu d’esprit is disgraced by such passages as the 
following: 
_ Forty fathers of Freedom, of whom twenty bred 


Their sons for the rice swamps at so much a head, 
And their daughters for—faugh; 


92 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


With the exception of Mr. Poe, (who has written 
some commendatory criticisms on his poems,) no 
Southerner is mentioned at all in this ‘‘Fable.” It 
is a fashion among Mr. Lowell’s set to affect a belief 
that there is no such thing as Southern Literature. 
Northerners—people who have really nothing to 
speak of as men of letters,—are cited by the dozen, 
and lauded by this candid critic without stint, 
while Legaré, Simms, Longstreet, and others of 
equal note are passed by in contemptuous silence. 
Mr. L. cannot carry his frail honesty of opinion even 
so far South as New York. All whom he praises 
are Bostonians. Other writers are barbarians, and 
satirized accordingly—if mentioned at all. 

To show the general manner of the Fable, we quote 
a portion of what he says about Mr. Poe: 


Here comes Poe with his Raven, like Barnaby Rudge— 
Three-fifths of him genius, and two-fifth sheer fudge; 
Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters, 

In a way to make all men of common sense d—n metres 
Who has written some things far the best of their kind; 
But somehow the heart seems squeezed out by the mind. 


We may observe here that profound ignorance on 
any particular topic is always sure to manifest itself 
by some allusion to “‘common sense” as an all- 
sufficient instructor. So far from Mr. P.’s talking 
‘like a book” on the topic at issue, his chief pur- 
pose has been to demonstrate that there exists no 
book on the subject worth talking about; and ‘‘com- 
mon sense,’ after all, has been the basis on which 
he relied, in contradistinction from the uncommon 
nonsense of Mr. L. and the small pedants. 

And now let us see how far the unusual ‘‘common 
sense’’ of our satirist has availed him in the structure 
of his verse. First, by way of showing what his 


JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 93 


intention was, we quote three accidentally accurate 
lines: 


But a boy | he could ne | ver be right | ly defined. 
As I said | he was ne | ver precise | ly unkind. 
But as Ci | cero says | he won’t say | this or that. 


Here it is clearly seen that Mr. L. intends a line of 
four anapests. (An anapest is a foot composed of 
two short syllables followed by a long.) With this 
observation, we will now simply copy a few of the 
lines which constitute the body of the poem; asking 
any of our readers to read them tf they can; that is to 
say, place the question, without argument, on the 
broad basis of the very commonest ‘‘common sense.”’ 


They’re all from one source, monthly, weekly, diurnal. ... 

Disperse all one’s good and condense all one’s poor traits. . . 

The one’s two-thirds Norseman, the other half Greek. . . . 

He has imitators in scores who omit... . 

Should suck milk, strong will-giving brave, such asruns. . . 

Along the far rail-road the steam-snake glide white. ... 

From the same runic type-fount and alphabet. ... 

Earth has six truest patriots, four discoverers of ether. . . 

Every cockboat that swims clears its fierce (pop) gundeck 
aun... 

Is some of it pr no, ‘tis not-even prose. ... 

O’er his principles when something else turns up trumps. . . 

But a few silly (syllo I mean) gisms that squat’em. .. . 

Nos, we don’t want extra freezing in winter. ... 

Plough, dig, sail, forge, build, carve, paint, make all things 
new. 





But enough:—we have given a fair specimen of 
the general versification. It might have been 
better—but we are quite sure that it could not have 
been worse. So much for ‘‘common sense,” in Mr. 
Lowell’s understanding of the term. Mr. L. should 
not have meddled with the anapestic rhythm: it is 
exceedingly awkward in the hands of one who 
knows nothing about it and who wll persist in 


94 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


fancying that he can write it byear. Very especially 
he should have avoided this rhythm in satire, which, 
more than any other branch of Letters, is dependent 
upon seeming trifles for its effect. ‘Two-thirds of 
the force of the ‘‘Dunciad” may be referred to its 
exquisite finish; and had ‘*‘The Fable for the Critics” 
been, (what it is not,) the quintessence of the satiric 
spirit itself, it would nevertheless, in so slovenly a 
form, have failed. As it is, no failure was ever more 
complete or more pitiable. By the publication of a 
book at once so ambitious and so feeble—so malev- 
olent in design and so harmless in execution—a 
work so roughly and clumsily yet so weakly con- 
structed—so very different, in body and spirit, from 
anything that he has written before—Mr. Lowell has 
committed an irrevocable faux pas and lowered 
himself at least fifty per cent in the literary public 
Opinion. 3 


MR. GRISWOLD AND THE POETS gs 


MR. GRISWOLD AND THE POETS 


q MHAT we are not a poetical people has been 

asserted so often and so roundly, both at 
. home and abroad, that the slander, through 

mere dint of repetition, has come to be received as 
truth. Yet nothing can be farther removed from it. 
The mistake is but a portion, or corollary, of the old 
dogma, that the calculating faculities are at war with 
the ideal; while, in fact, it may be demonstrated that 
the two divisions of mental power are never to be 
found in perfection apart. The highest order of the 
imaginative intellect is always preéminently mathe- 
matical; and the converse. 

The idiosyncrasy of our political position has 
stimulated into early action whatever practical 
talent we possessed. Even in our national infancy 
we evinced a degree of utilitarian ability which put 
to shame the mature skill of our forefathers. While 
yet in leading-strings we proved ourselves adepts in 
all the arts and sciences which promote the comfort 
of the animal man. But the arena of exertion, and 
of consequent distinction, into which our first and 
most obvious wants impelled us, has been regarded 
as the field of our deliberate choice. Our necessities 
have been mistaken for our propensities. Having 
been forced to make railroads, it has been deemed 
impossible that we should make verse. Because it 
suited us to construct an engine in the first instance, 
it has been denied that we could compose an epic in 
the second. Because we were not all Homers in the 
beginning, it has been somewhat too rashly taken 


96 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


for granted that we shall be all Jeremy Benthams 
to the end. 

But this is the purest insanity. The principles 
of the poetic sentiment lie deep within the im- 
mortal nature of man, and have little necessary ref- 
erence to the worldly circumstances which sur- 
round him. The poet in Arcady is, in Kamschatka, 
the poet still. The self-same Saxon current ani- 
mates the British and the American heart; nor can 
any social, or political, or moral, or physical condi- 
tions do more than momentarily repress the im- 
pulses which glow in our own bosoms as fervently 
as in those of our progenitors. 

Those who have taken most careful note of our 
literature for the last ten or twelve years, will be 
most willing to admit that we are a poetical people; 
and in no respect is the fact more plainly evinced 


than in the eagerness with which books professing 


to compile or select from the productions of our 
native bards, are received and appreciated by the 
public. Such books meet with success, at least 
with sale, at periods when the general market for 
literary wares is in a state of stagnation; and even the 
ill taste displayed in some of them has not sufficed 
to condemn. 

The “Specimens of American Poetry,” by Kettell; 
the “Common-place Book of American Poetry,” by 
Cheever; a Selection by General Morris; another by 
Mr. Bryant; the ‘* Poets of America,’’ by Mr. Keese— 
all these have been widely disseminated and well 
received. In some measure, to be sure, we must 
regard their success as an affair of personalities. 
Each individual, honored with a niche in the com- 
piler’s memory, is naturally anxious to possess a 
copy of the book so honoring him; and this anxiety 
will extend, in some cases, to ten or twenty of the 


j 
a 


MR. GRISWOLD AND THE POETS 97 


immediate friends of the complimented; while, on 
the other hand, purchasers will arise, in no small 
number, from among a very different class—a class 
animated by very different feelings. I mean the 
- omitted—the large body of those who, supposing 
themselves entitled to mention, have yet been un- 
mentioned. These buy the unfortunate book as a 
matter of course, for the purpose of abusing it with 
a clear conscience and at leisure. But holding 
these deductions in view, we are still warranted 
in believing that the demand for works of the kind 
in question, is to be attributed, mainly, to the gen- 
eral interest of the subject discussed. The public 
have been desirous of obtaining a more distinct 
view of our poetical literature than the scattered 
effusions of our bards and the random criticisms of 
our periodicals, could afford. But, hitherto, noth- 
ing has been accomplished in the way of supplying 
the desideratum. The “specimens”’ of Kettell were 
specimens of nothing but the ignorance and ill taste 
of the compiler. A large proportion of what he 
gave to the world as American poetry, to the ex- 
clusion of much that was really so, was the doggerel 
composition of individuals unheard of and un- 
dreamed of, except by Mr. Kettell himself. Mr. 
Cheever’s book did not belie its title, and was 
excessively “‘Common-place.’”’ The selection by 
General Morris was in so far good, that it accom- 
plished its object to the full extent. This object 
looked to nothing more than single, brief extracts 
from the writings of every one in the country who 
had established even the slightest reputation as a 
poet. The extracts, so far as our truer poets were 
concerned, were tastefully made; but the prover- 
bial kind feeling of the General seduced him into the 
admission of an inordinate quantity of the purest 
Vou. VI—7 


98 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


twattle. It was gravely declared that we had more 
than two hundred poets in the land. The compila- 
tion of Mr. Bryant, from whom much was expected, 
proved a source of mortification to his friends, and 
of astonishment and disappointment to all; merely 
showing that a poet is, necessarily, neither a critical 
nor an impartial judge of poetry. Mr. Keese suc- 
ceeded much better. He brought to his task, if not 
the most rigorous impartiality, at least a fine taste, 
a sound judgment, and a more thorough acquaint- 
ance with our poetical literature than had dis- 
tinguished either of his predecessors. 

Much, however, remained to be done; and here it 
may be right to inquire—‘‘ What should be the aim 
of every compilation of the character now dis- 
cussed?’ The object, in general terms, may be 
stated, as the conveying, within moderate compass, 
a distinct view of our poetry and of our poets. . This, 
in fact, is the demand of the public. A book is re- 
quired, which shall not so much be the reflection of 
the compiler’s peculiar views and opinions upon 
poetry in the abstract, as of the popular judgment 
upon such poetical works as have come immediately 
within its observation. It is not the author’s busi- 
ness to insist upon his own theory, and, in its sup- 
port, to rake up from the by-ways of the country 
the ‘‘inglorious Miltons” who may, possibly, there 
abound; neither, because ill according with this 
theory, is it his duty to dethrone and reject those who 
have long maintained supremacy in the estimation 
of the people. In this view, it will be seen that 
regard must be paid to the mere quantity of a 
writer’s effusions. He who his published much, is 
not to be omitted because, in the opinion of the 
compiler, he has written nothing fit for publication. 
On the other hand, he who has extemporized a 


MR. GRISWOLD AND THE POETS — 99 


single song, which has met the eye of no one but our 
bibliographer, is not to be set forth among the 
poetical magnates, even although the one song it- 
self be esteemed equal to the very best of Bérangér. 

Of the two classes of sins—the negative and the 
positive—those of omission and those of commis- 
sion—obvious ones of the former class are, beyond 
doubt, the more unpardonable. It is better to 
introduce half a dozen “great unknowns,’ than to 
give the “cut direct”’ to a single individual who has 
been fairly acknowledged as known. The public, 
in short, seem to demand such a compendium of our 
poetical literature as shall embrace specimens from 
those works alone, of our recognized poets, which, 
either through accident, or by dint of merit, have been 
most particularly the subjects of public discussion. 
We wish this, that we may be put in condition to 
decide for ourselves upon the justice or injustice of 
the reputation attained. In critical opinion much 
diversity exists; and, although there is one true and 
tenable critical opinion, there are still a thousand, 
upon all topics, which, being only the shadows, 
have all the outlines, and assume all the movements, 
of the substance of truth. Thus any critic who 
should exclude from’ the compendium all which 
tallied not with his individual ideas of the Muse, 
would be found to exclude nine hundred and ninety- 
nine thousandths of that which the public at large, 
embracing all varieties of opinion, has been ac- 
customed to acknowledge as poesy. 

These remarks apply only to the admission or 
rejection of poetical specimens. The public being 
put fairly in possession of the matter debated, with 
the provisions above mentioned, the analysis of in- 
dividual claims, so far as the specimens extend, is not 
onlv not unbecoming in the compiler, but a thing to 


too EDGAR ALLAN POE 


be expected and desired. To this department of his 
work he should bring analytical ability; a distinct 
impression of the nature, the principles, and the aims 
of poetry; a thorough contempt for all prejudice at 
war with principle; a poetic sense of the poetic; 
sagacity in the detection, and audacity in the ex- 
posure of demerit; in a word talent and fazth; the 
lofty honor which places mere courtesy beneath its 
feet; the boldness to praise an enemy, and the more 
unusual courage to damn a friend. 

It is, in fact, by the criticism of the work, that the 
public voice will, in the end, decide upon its merits. 
In proportion to the ability or incapacity here dis- 
played, will it, sooner or later, be approved or con- © 
demned. Nevertheless, the mere compilation is 
a point, perhaps, of greater importance. With the 
meagre published azds existing previously to Mr. 
Griswold’s book, the labor of such an undertaking: 
must have been great; and not less great the industry 
and general information in respect to our literary 
affairs, which have enabled him so successfully to 
prosecute it. | 

The work before us* is indeed so vast an improve- 
ment upon those of a similar character which have 
preceded it, that we do its author some wrong in 
classing all together. Having explained, somewhat — 
minutely, our views of the proper mode of com- 
pilation, and of the general aims of the species of 
book in question, it but remains to say that these 
views have been very nearly fulfilled in the ‘“‘ Poets 
and Poetry of America,’’ while altogether unsatisfied 
by the earlier publications. 

The volume opens with a preface, which, with 


*The Poets and Poetry of America: with an Historical 
uBR erase By Rufus W. Griswold. Philadelphia: Carey 
art. 


MR. GRISWOLD AND THE POETS tor 


some little supererogation, is addressed ‘‘To the 
Reader’; inducing very naturally the query, 
whether the whole book is not addressed to the same 
individual. In this preface, which is remarkably 
well written and strictly to the purpose, the author 
thus evinces a just comprehension of the nature 
and objects of true poesy: 


He who looks on Lake George, or sees the sun rise on 
Mackinaw, or listens to the grand music of a storm, is di- 
vested, certainly for a time, of a portion of the alloy of his 
nature. The elements of power in all sublime sights and 
heavenly harmonies, should live in the poet’s song, to which 
they can be transferred only by him who possesses the 
creative faculty. The sense of beauty, next to the miracu- 
lous divine suasion, is the means through which the human 
character is purified and elevated. The creation of beauty, 
the mantfestation of the real by the tdeal, “in words that move 
an metrical array,” 1s poetry. 


The italics are our own; and we quote the passage 
because it embodies the sole true definition of what 
has been a thousand times erroneously defined. 

The earliest specimens of poetry presented in the 
body of the work, are frem the writings of Philip 
Freneau, ‘‘one of those worthies who, both with 
lyre and sword, aided in the achievement of our in- 
dependence.’”’ But, in a volume professing to treat, 
generally, of the ‘‘Poets and Poetry of America,”’ 
some mention of those who versified before Freneau, 
would of] course, be considered desirable. Mr. 
Griswold has included, therefore, most of our 
earlier votaries of the Muse, with many specimens of 
their powers, in an exceedingly valuable ‘‘ Historical 
Introduction”; his design being to exhibit as well 
“the progress as the condition of poetry in the 
United States.” 

The basis of the compilation is formed of short 


102 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


biographical and critical notices, with selections 
from the works of, in all, eighty-seven authors, 
chronologically arranged. In an appendix at the 
end of the volume, are included specimens from the 
works of sixty, whose compositions have either been 
too few, or in the editor’s opinion too medzocres, to 
entitle them to more particular notice. To each of 
these specimens are appended foot notes, conveying 
a brief biographical summary, without anything of 
critical disquisition. 

Of the general plan and execution of the work we 
have already expressed the fullest approbation. We 
know no one in America who could, or who would, 
have performed the task here undertaken, at once 
so well in accordance with the judgment of the 
critical, and so much to the satisfaction of the 
public. The labors, the embarrassments, the great 
difficulties of the achievement are not easily esti- 
mated by those before the scenes. , 

In saying that, individually, we disagree with 
many of the opinions expressed by Mr. Griswold, 
is merely suggesting what, in itself, would have been 
obvious without the suggestion. It rarely happens 
that any two persons thoroughly agree upon any 
one point. It would be mere madness to imagine 
that any two could coincide in every point of a case 
where exists a multiplicity of opinions upon a 
multiplicity of points. There is no one who, reading 
the volume before us, will not in a thousand in- 
stances, be tempted to throw it aside, because its 
prejudices and partialities are, in a thousand in- 
stances, altogether at war with his own. But when 
so tempted, he should bear in mind, that had the 
work been that of Aristarchus himself, the dis- 
crepancies of opinion would still have startled him 
and vexed him as now. 


MR. GRISWOLD AND THE POETS 103 


We disagree then, with Mr. Griswold in many 
of his critical estimates; although in general, we are 
proud to find his decisions our own. He has omit- 
ted from the body of his book, some one or two 
whom we should have been tempted to introduce. 
On the other hand, he has scarcely made us amends 
by introducing some one or two dozen whom we 
should have treated with contempt. We might 
complain too of a prepossession, evidently unper- 
ceived by himself, for the writers of New England. 
We might hint also, that in two or three cases, he has 
rendered himself liable to the charge of personal 
partiality; it is often so very difficult a thing to 
keep separate in the mind’s eye, our conceptions 
of the poetry of a friend, from our impressions of his 
good fellowship and our recollections of the flavor 
of his wine. 

But having said thus much in the way of fault- 
finding, we have said all. The book should be re- 
garded as the most tmportant addition which our 
literature has for many years received. It fills a void 
which should have been long ago supplied. It 
is written with judgment, with dignity and candor. 
Steering with a dexterity not to be sufficiently ad- 
mired, between the Scylla of Prejudice on the one 
hand, and the Charybdis of Conscience on the other, 
Mr. Griswold in the “ Poets and Poetry of America,”’ 
has entitled himself to the thanks of his countrymen, 
while showing himself a man of taste, talent, and 
tact. 





THe FEMALE Ports or AMERICA* is a large 
volume, to match “The Poets and Poetry of 
America,”’ “The Prose Authors of America,” and 


*The Female Poets of America. By Rufus Wilmot Gris- 
wold. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart. 


104 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


“The Poets and Poetry of England,’’—all of which 
have been eminently and justly successful. These 
works have indisputable claims upon public at- 
tention as critical summaries, at least, of literary 
merit and demerit. Their great and most obvious 
value, as affording data or material for criticism— 
as mere collections of the best specimens in each de- 
partment and as records of fact, in relation not more 
to books than to their authors—has in some measure 
overshadowed the more important merit of the © 
series: for these works have often, and in fact very 
generally, the positive merits of discriminative 
criticism, and of honesty—alwuys the more negative 
merit of strong common-sense. The best of the 
series is, beyond all question, ‘The Prose Author of 
America.”’ This is a book of which any critic in the 
country might well have been proud, without ref- 
erence to the mere industry and research mani- 
fested in its compilation. ‘These are truly remark- 
able; but the vigor of comment and force of style 
are not less so; while more independence and self- 
reliance are manifested than in any other of the 
series. ‘There is not a weak paper in the book; and 
some of the articles are able in all respects. The 
truth is that Mr. Griswold’s intellect is more at 
home in Prose than Poetry. He is a better judge of 
fact than of fancy; not that he has not shown him- 
self quite competent to the task undertaken in “The 
Poets and Poetry of America,’’ or of England, or in 
the work now especially before us. In this latter, 
he has done no less credit to himself than to the 
numerous lady-poets whom he discusses—and many 
of whom he now first introduces to the public. We 
are glad, for Mr. Griswold’s sake, as well as for the 
interests of our literature generally, to perceive 
that he has been at the pains of doing what Northern 


MR. GRISWOLD AND THE POETS tos 


critics seem to be at great pains never to do—that is 
to say, he has been at the trouble of doing justice, 
in great measure, to several poetesses who have 
not had the good fortune to be born in the North. 
The notices of the Misses Carey, of the Misses Fuller, 
of the sisters Mrs. Warfield and Mrs. Lee, of Mrs. 
Nichols, of Miss Welby, and of Miss Susan Archer 
Talley, reflect credit upon Mr. Griswold, and show 
him to be a man not more of taste than—shall we 
say it?—of courage. Let our readers be assured 
that, (as matters are managed among the four or 
five different cliques who control our whole literature 
in controlling the larger portion of our critical 
journals,) it requires no small amount of cowrage, in 
an author whose subsistence lies in his pen, to hint, 
even, that anything good, in a literary way, can, by 
any possibility, exist out of the limits of a certain 
narrow territory. We repeat that Mr. Griswold 
deserves our thanks, under such circumstances, for 
the cordiality with which he has recognized the 
poetical claims of the ladies mentioned above. He 
has not, however, done one or two of them that full 
justice which, ere long, the public will take upon itself 
the task of rendering them. We allude especially to 
the case of Miss Talley. Mr. Griswold praises her 
highly; and we would admit that it would be ex- 
pecting of him too much, just at present, to hope 
for his avowing, of Miss Talley, what we think of her, 
and what one of our best known critics has distinctly 
avowed—that she ranks already with the best of 
American poetesses, and in time will surpass them 
all—that her demerits are those of inexperience 
and excessive sensibility, (betraying her, uncon- 
Ssciously, into imitation,) while her merits are 
those of unmistakeable genius. We are proud 
to be able to say, moreover, in respect to another 


106 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


of the ladies referred to above, that one of her poems 
is decidedly the noblest poem in the collection— 
although the most distinguished poetesses in the land 
have here included their most praiseworthy com- 
positions. Our allusion is to Miss Alice Carey’s 
‘‘Pictures of Memory.’’ Let our readers see it 
and judge for themselves. We speak deliberately: 
—in all the higher elements of poetry—in true 
imagination—in the power of exciting the only real 
poetical effect—elevation of the soul, in contra- 
distinction from mere excitement of the intellect or 
heart—the poem in question is the noblest in the 
book. 

‘‘The Female Poets of America” includes ninety- 
five names—commencing with Ann Bradstreet, 
the contemporary of the once world-renowned Du 
Bartas—him of the ‘‘nonsense-verses’”—the poet 
who was in the habit of styling the sun the ‘‘Grand 
Duke of Candles” —and ending with ‘‘Helen Irving”’ 
—a nom de plume of Miss Anna H. Phillips. Mr. 
Griswold gives most space to Mrs. Maria Brooks, 
(Maria del Occidente,) not, we hope and believe, 
merely because Southey has happened to commend 
her. The claims of this lady we have not yet 
examined so thoroughly as we could wish, and we 
will speak more fully of her hereafter, perhaps. 
In point of actual merit—that is to say of actual 
accomplishment, without reference to mere indica- 
tions of the ability to accomplish—we would rank 
the first dozen or so in this order—(leaving out 
Mrs. Brooks for the present). Mrs. Osgood—very 
decidedly first—then Mrs. Welby, Miss Carey, (or 
the Misses Carey,) Miss Talley, Mrs. Whitman, Miss 
Lynch, Miss Frances Fuller, Miss Lucy Hooper, 
Mrs. Oakes Smith, Mrs. Ellet, Mrs. Hewitt, Miss 
Clarke, Mrs. Lewis, Mrs. Nichols, Mrs. Warfield, 


MR. GRISWOLD AND THE POETS 107 


(with her sister, Mrs. Lee,) Mrs. Eames, and Mrs. 
Sigourney. If Miss Lynch had as much imagination 
as energy of expression and artistic power, we 
would place her next to Mrs. Osgood. The next 
skilful merely, of those just mentioned, are Mrs. 
Osgood, Miss Lynch, and Mrs. Sigourney. The 
most imaginative are Miss Carey, Mrs. Osgood, 
Miss Talley, and Miss Fuller. The most accomp- 
lished are Mrs. Ellet, Mrs. Eames, Mrs. Lewis, 
Mrs. Whitman, and Mrs. Oakes Smith. The most 
popular are Mrs. Osgood, Mrs. Oakes Smith, and 
Miss Hooper. 


108 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


MR. LONGFELLOW AND OTHER 
PLAGIARISTS 


A DISCUSSION WITH “OUTIS” 


— ee 


| Be the ‘‘Evening Mirror” of January 14, 


(1846), before my editorial connexion with 

the ‘‘Broadway Journal,” I furnished a brief 
criticism on Professor Longfellow’s ‘‘Waif.’’ In the 
course of my observations, I collated a poem called 
“‘The Death-Bed,’”’ and written by Hood, with 
one by Mr. Aldrich, entitled ‘‘A Death-Bed.”’ The 
criticism ended thus: 


We conclude our notes on the “ Waif,” with the observa- 
tion that, although full of beauties, it is infected with a 
moral taint—or is this a mere freak of our own fancy? We 
shall be pleased if it be so;—but there does appear, in this 
little volume, a very careful avoidance of all American poets 
who may be supposed especially to interfere with the claims 
of Mr. Longfellow. These men Mr. Longfellow can con- 
tinuously zmitate (1s that the word?) and yet never even 
incidentally commend. 


Much discussion ensued. A friend of Mr. Long- 
fellow’s penned a defence, which had at least the 
merit of being thoroughly impartial; for it defended 
Mr. L., not only from the one-tenth of very moderate 
disapproval in which I had indulged, but from the 
nine-tenths of my enthusiastic admiration into the 
bargain. The fact is, if I was not convinced that 
in ninety-nine hundredths of all that I had written 
about Mr. Longfellow I was decidedly in the wrong, 
at least it was no fault of Mr. Longfellow’s very 
luminous friend. This well-intended defence was 


LONGFELLOW anv orner PLAGIARISTS 106 


published in the ‘‘Mirror,” with a few words of 
preface by Mr. Willis, and of postscript by myself. 
Still dissatisfied, Mr. L., through a second friend, 
addressed to Mr. Willis an expostulatory letter, of 
which the “Mirror” printed only the following 
portion: 


It has been asked, perhaps, why Lowell was neglected in 
this collection? Might it not as well be asked why Bryant, 
Dana and Halleck were neglected? The answer is obvious 
to any one who candidly considers the character of the 
collection. It professed to be, according to the Poem, from 
the humbler poets; and it was intended to embrace pieces 
that were anonymous, or which were easily accessible to the 
general reader—the wazfs and estrays of literature. To 
put anything of Lowell’s, for example, into a collection of 
waifs would be a particular liberty with pieces which are all 
collected and christened. 


Not yet content, or misunderstanding the tenor 
of some of the wittily-put comments which accom- 
panied the quotation, the aggrieved poet, through 
one of the two friends as before, or perhaps through 
a third, finally prevailed on the good nature of Mr. 
Willis to publish an explicit declaration of his dis- 
agreement with ‘‘all the disparagement of Longfellow 
which had appeared in the criticism in question. 

Now when we consider that many of the points 
of censure made by me in this critique were absolutely 
as plain as the nose upon Mr. Longfellow’s face—that 
it was impossible to gainsay them—that we defied 
him and his coadjutors to say a syllable in reply to 
them—and that they held their tongues and not asyl- 
lable said—when we consider all this, I say, then the 
satire of the ‘‘all” in Mr. Willis’s manifesto becomes 
apparent at once. Mr. Longfellow did not see it, 
and I presume his friends did not see it. I did. 
In my mind’s eye it expanded itself thus;—'*My 


1I0 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


deat Sir, or Sirs, what will you have? you are an 
insatiable set of cormorants, it is true; but if you 
will only let me know what you desire, I will satisfy 
you, if I die forit. Be quick!—merely say what it is 
you wish me to admit, and (for the sake of getting 
rid of you) I will admit it upon the spot. Come! 
I will grant at once that Mr. Longfellow is Jupiter 
Tonans, and that his three friends are the Graces, 
or the Furies, whichever you please. As for a 
fault to be found with either of you, that is im- 
possible, and I say so. I disagree with all—with 
every syllable of the disparagement that ever has 
been whispered against you up to this date, and 
(not to stand upon trifles) with ali that ever shall be 
whispered against you henceforward, forever and 
forever. May I hope at length that these as- 
surances will be sufficient?” But if Mr. Willis 
really hoped anything of the kind he was mistaken. 
In the meantime Mr. Briggs, in the ‘‘Broadway 
Journal’’—did me the honor of taking me to task 
for what he supposed to be my insinuations against 
Mr. Aldrich. Myreply (in the ‘‘Mirror’’) prefaced 
by a few words from Mr. Willis, ran as follows: 
Much interest has been given in our literary 
circles of late to the topic of plagiarism. About 
a month ago a very eminent critic connected with 
this paper, took occasion to point out a parallelism 
between certain lines of Thomas Hood, and certain 
others which appeared in the collection of American 
poetry edited by Mr. Griswold. ‘Transcribing the 
passages, he ventured the assertion that ‘‘somebody 
is a thief.” The matter had been nearly forgotten, 
if not altogether so, when a good-natured friend” 
of the American author (whose name had by us 
never been mentioned) considered it advisable to 
re-collate the passages, with the view of convincing 


LONGFELLOW anp otHer PLAGIARISTS 111 


the public (and himself) that no plagiarism is 
chargeable to the party of whom he thinks it chival- 
rous to be the ‘‘good-natured friend.’ For our 
own part, should we ever be guilty of an indis- 
cretion of this kind, we deprecate all aid from our 
‘good-natured friends’—but in the mean time 
it is rendered necessary that once again we give 
publicity to the collation of poems in question. 
Mr. Hood’s lines run thus: 


We watched her breathing through the night, 
Her breathing soft and low, 

As in her breast the wave of life 
Kept heaving to and fro. 


So silently we seemed to speak, 
So slowly moved about, 

As we had lent her half our powers 
To eke her being out. 


Our very hope belied our fears; 
Our fears our hope belied; 

We thought her dying when she slept, 
And sleeping when she died. 


But when the morn came dim and sad, 
And chill with early showers, 

Her quiet eyelids closed;—she had 
Another morn than ours. 


Mr. Aldrich’s thus:— 


Her sufferings ended with the day, 
Yet lived she at its close, 

And breathed the long, long night away 
In statue-like repose; . 


But when the sun in all its state 
Illumed the eastern skies, 

She passed through Glory’s morning gate, 
And walked in paradise, 


TI2 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


And here, to be sure, we might well leave a decision in the 
case to the verdict of common sense. But since the 
“Broadway Journal” insists upon the “no resemblance,” 
we are constrained to point out especially where our 
supposed similarity lies. In the first place, then, the sub- 
ject in both pieces is death. In the second, it is the death 
of a woman. In the third, it is the death of a woman 
tranquilly dying. In the fourth, it is the death of a woman 
who lies tranquilly throughout the night. In the fifth, it is 
the death of a woman whose “breathing soft and low is 
watched through the night,’’ in the one instance, and who 
“breathed the long long night away in statue-like repose”’ 
in the other. In the sixth place, in both poems this woman 
dies just at daybreak. In the seventh place, dying just 
at daybreak, this woman, in both cases, steps directly into 
Paradise. In the eighth place, all these identities of 
circumstance are related in identical rhythms. In the 
ninth place, these identical rhythms are arranged in iden- 
tical metres; and, in the tenth place, these identical rhythms 
and metres are constructed into identical stanzas. 


At this point the matter rested for a fortnight, 
when a fourth friend of Mr. Longfellow took up the 
cudgels for him and Mr. Aldrich conjointly, in 
another communication to the ‘‘Mirror.” I copy 
it in full. 


PLAGIARISM.—Dear Wallis—Fair play is a jewel, and I 
hope you will let us have it. I have been much amused, 
by some of the efforts of your critical friend, to convict 
Longfellow of imitation, and Aldrich and others, of pla- 
giarism. What zs plagiarism? And what constitutes a 
good ground for the charge? Did no two men ever think 
alike without stealing one from the other? or, thinking alike, 
did no two men ever use the same, or similar words, to 
convey the thoughts, and that, without any communication 
with each other? To deny it would be absurd. It is a 
thing of every day occurrence. Some years ago, a letter 
was written from some part of New England, describing 
one of those scenes, not very common during what is 
called “the January thaw,’’ when the snow, mingled with 
rain, and freezing as it falls, forms a perfect covering of ice 


LONGFELLOW anp orner PLAGIARISTS 173 


upon every object. The storm clears away suddenly, and 
the moon comes up. The letter proceeds—“ every tree 
and shrub, as far as the eye can reach, of pure transparent 
glass—a perfect garden of moving, waving, breathing crystals. 
. . |. Every tree 1s a diamond chandelier, with a whole con- 
stellation of stars clustering to every socket,’’ &c. This letter 
was laid away where such things usually are, in a private 
drawer, and did not see the light for many years. But 
the very next autumn brought out, among the splendid 
annuals got up in the country, a beautiful poem from 
Whittier, describing the same, or rather a similar scene, in 
which this line: 


The trees, like crystal chandeliers, 


was put in italics by every reviewer in the land, for the 
exceeding beauty of the imagery. Now the letter was 
written, probably, about the same time with the poem, 
though the poem was not published till nearly a year 
after. The writers were not, and never have been, ac- 
quainted with each other, and neither could possibly have 
seen the work of the other before writing. Now, was there 
any plagiarism here? Yet there are plenty of “zdenttties.”’ 
The author of the letter, when urged, some years after, 
to have it published, consented very reluctantly, through 
fear that he should be charged with theft; and, very prob- 
ably, the charge has been made, though I have never seen 
it. May not this often occur? What is more natural? 
Images are not created, but suggested. And why not the 
same images, when the circumstances are precisely the 
same, to different minds? Perhaps your critic will reply, 
that the case is different after one of the compositions is 
published. How so? Does he or you, or anybody read 
everything that is published? I ama great admirer, anda 
general reader of poetry. But, by what accident I do not 
know, I had never seen the beautiful lines of Hood, till your 
critical friend brought them to my notice in the Mirror. 
It is certainly possible that Aldrich had not seen them 
several years ago—and more than probable that Hood had 
not seen Aldrich’s. Yet your friend affects great sym- 
pathy for both, in view of their better compunctions of 
conscience, for their literary piracies. 

But, after all, wherein does the real resemblance between 
these two compositions consist? Mr, , I had almost 

Vor. VI—8 





II4 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


named him, finds nearly a dozen points of resemblance. 
But when he includes rhythm, metre and stanza among 
the dozen, he only shows a bitter resolution to make out a 
case, and not a disposition to do impartial justice. Surely 
the critic himself who is one of our finest poets, does not 
mean to deny that these mere externals are the common 
property of all bards. He does not feel it necessary to 
strike out a new stanza, or to invent new feet and measures, 
whenever he would clothe his “ breathing thoughts in words 
that burn.”’ Again, it is not improbable that, within 
the period of time since these two writers, Hood and Aldrich, 
came on the stage, ten thousand females have died, and 
died tranquilly, and died just at daybreak, and that after 
passing a tranquil night, and, so dying, were supposed by 
their friends to have passed at once to a better world, a 
morning in heaven. The poets are both describing an 
actual, and not an imaginary occurrence. And here— 
including those before mentioned, which are common 
property—are nine of the critic’s zdentittes, which go to 
make up the evidence of plagiarism. The last six, it 
requires no stretch of the imagination to suppose, they 
might each have seen and noticed separately. The most 
of them, one other poet at least, has noticed, many years 
ago, in a beautiful poem on these words of the angel to the 
wrestling Jacob—“Let me go, for the day breaketh.” 
Wonder if Hood ever saw that? The few remaining 
“identities”? are, to my mind, sufficiently disposed of by 
what I have already said. I confess I was not able, until 
the appearance of the critic’s second paper, in which he 
brought them out specially, “marked, numbered, and 
labelled,”’ to perceive the resemblance on which the grave 
charge of literary piracy, and moral dishonesty of the 
meanest kind was based. In view of all the glaring im- 
probabilities of such a case, a critic should be very slow 
to make such a charge. I say glaring improbabilities, 
for it seems to me that no circumstantial evidence could be 
sufficient to secure a verdict of theft in such a case. Look 
at it. A man, who aspires to fame, who seeks the esteem 
and praise of the world, and lives upon his reputation, 
as his vital element, attempts to win his object—how? 
By stealing, in open day, the finest passages, the most 
beautiful thoughts, (no others are worth stealing,) and 
the rarest images of another, and claiming them as his 


LONGFELLOW anp otHerR PLAGIARISTS 115 


own; and that too, when he knows that every competitor for 
fame, and every critical tribunal in the world, as well as 
the real owner, will be ready to zdentify the borrowed 
plumes in a moment, and cry him down as a thief. A 
madman, an idiot, if he were capable of such an achieve- 
ment, might do it, but no other. A rogue may steal what 
he can conceal in his pocket, or his chest—but one must 
be utterly non compos, to steal a splendid shawl, or a 
magnificent plume, which had been admired by thousands 
for its singular beauty, for the purpose of sporting it in 
Broadway. In nine hundred and ninety-nine cases of a 
thousand, such charges are absurd, and indicate rather 
the carping littleness of the critic, than the delinquency of 
his victim, 

Pray did you ever think the worse of Dana because your 
friend, John Neal, charged him with pirating upon Paul 
Allen, and Bryant too, in his poem of “ THE Dy1nc RAvEN?’”’ 
or of yourself, because the same friend thought he had 
detected you in the very act of stealing from Pinckney, and 
Miss Francis, now Mrs. Child? Surely not. Everybody 
knows that John Neal wishes to be supposed to have read 
everything that ever was written, and never have forgotten 
anything. He delights, therefore, in showing up such 
resemblances. 

And now—for the matter of Longfellow’s imitations— 
In what do they consist? The critic is not very specific 
in this charge. Of what kind are they? Are they imita- 
tions of thought? Why not call them plagiarisms then, and 
show them up? Or are they only verbal imitations of 
style? Perhaps this is one of them, in his poem on the 
“Sea Weed.” 





drifting, drifting, drifting 
On the shifting 
Currents of the restless main. 


resembling, in form and collocation only, a line in a beauti- 
ful and very powerful poem of Mr. Epcar A. Por. (Write 
it rather Epcar, a Poet, and then it is right toa T.) I 
have not the poem before me, and have forgotten its title. 
But he is describing a magnificent intellect in ruins, if I 
remember rightly—and, speaking of the eloquence of its 
better days, represents it as 


flowing, flowing, flowing 
Like a river. 





116 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Is this what the critic means? Is it such imitations as 
this that he alludes to? If not, I am at fault, either in 
my reading of Longfellow, or in my general familiarity 
with the American Poets. If this be the kind of imitation 
referred to, permit me to say, the charge is too paltry for 
any man, who valued his reputation either as a gentleman 
or a scholar, to make. Who, for example, would wish to be 
guilty of the littleness of detracting from the uncommon 
merit of that remarkable poem of this same Mr, Poe’s, 
recently published in the Mirror, from the American Review, 
entitled “THE RAVEN,” by charging him with the paltriness 
of imitation? And yet, some snarling critic, who might 
envy the reputation he had not the genius to secure for 
himself, might refer to the frequent, very forcible, but 
rather quaint repetition, in the last two lines of many of the 
stanzas, as a palpable imitation of the manner of Coleridge, 
in several stanzas of the Ancient Mariner. Let me put them 
together. Mr. Poe says— 


Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore, 
Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore 


And again— 


It shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore— 
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore. 


Mr. Coleridge says, (running two lines into one:) 


For all averred I had killed the bird, that made the breeze to 


blow, 
‘*Ah, wretch!”’ said they, ‘‘the bird to slay, and made the breeze 
to blow.” : 
And again— 
They all averred I had killed the bird, that brought the fog 
and mist. 


‘’Twas right,” said they, ‘‘such birds to slay, that bring the 
fog and mist.” 


I have before me an anonymous poem, which I first 
saw some five years ago, entitled “The Bird of the Dream.” 
I should like to transcribe the whole—but it is too long. 
The author was awaked from sleep by the song of a beau- 
tiful bird, sitting on the sill of his window—the sweet notes 
had mingled with his dreams, and brought to his remem- 
brance, the sweeter voice of his lost “CLare.’’ He says— 


LONGFELLOW ann otHer PLAGIARISTS 117 


And thou wert in my dream—a spirit thou didst seem— 
The spirit of a friend long since departed; 

Oh; she was fair and bright, but she left me one dark night— 
She left me all alone, and broken-hearted...... 


My dream went on, and thou went a warbling too, 
Mingling the harmonies of earth and heaven; 

Till away—away—away—beyond the realms of day— 
My angel CLarE to my embrace was given...... 


Sweet bird from realms of light, oh! come again to-night, 
Come to my window—perch upon my chair— 

Come give me back again that deep impassioned strain 
That tells me thou hast seen and loved my CLarg. 


Now I shall not charge Mr. Poe with plagiarism—for, 
as I have said, such charges are perfectly absurd. Ten to 
one, he never saw this before. But let us look at the 
“identities’’ that may be made out between this and “Tue 
RAVEN.” Jirst, in each case, the poet is a broken-hearted 
lover. Second, that lover longs for some hereafter com- 
munion with the departed. Third, thereisabird. Fourth, 
the bird is at the poet’s window. Fifth, the bird being at 
the poet’s window, makes a noise. Sixth, making a noise, 
attracts the attention of the poet; who, Seventh, was half 
asleep, dosing, dreaming. Eighth, the poet invites the 
bird to come in. Ninth, a confabulation ensues. Tenth, 
the bird is supposed to be a visitor from the land of spirits, 
Eleventh, allusion is made to the departed. Twelfth, 
intimation is given that the bird knew something of the 
departed. Thirteenth, that he knew her worth and loveli- 
ness. Fourteenth, the bird seems willing to linger with the 
poet. Fifteenth, there is a repetition, in the second and 
fourth lines, of a part, and that the emphatic part, of the 
first and third. Here is a round baker’s-dozen (and one 
to spare) of identities, to offset the dozen found between 
Aldrich and Hood, and that too, without a word of rhythm, 
metre or stanza, which should never form a part of such a 
comparison. Moreover, this same poem contains an 
example of that kind of repetition, which I have supposed 
the critic meant to charge upon Longfellow as one of his 
imitations— 


Away—away—away, &¢ 


118 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


I might pursue it further. But I will not. Such criti- 
cisms only make the author of them contemptible, without 
soiling a plume in the cap of his victim. I have selected 
this poem of Mr. Poe’s, for illustrating my remarks, because 
it is recent, and must be familiar to all the lovers of true 
poetry hereabouts. It is remarkable for its power, beauty, 
and originality, (out upon the automaton owl that has 
presumed to croak out a miserable parody—I commend 
him to the tender mercies of Haynes Bayley,*) and shows 
more forcibly than any which I can think of, the absurdity 
and shallowness of this kind of criticism. One word more, 
—though acquainted with Mr. Longfellow, I have never 
seen Mr. Aldrich, nor do I even know in what part of the 
country he resides; and I have no acquaintance with Mr. 
Poe. I have written what I have written from no personal 
motives, but simply because, from my earliest reading of 
reviews and critical notices, I have been disgusted with 
this wholesale mangling of victims without rhyme or reason. 
I scarcely remember an instance where the resemblances 
detected were not exceedingly far-fetched and shadowy, 
and only perceptible to a mind pre-disposed to suspicion, 
and accustomed to splitting hairs. OUTIS. 


What I admire in this letter is the gentlemanly 
grace of the manner, and the chivalry which has 
prompted its composition. What I do not admire 
is all the rest. In especial, I do not admire the des- 
peration of the effort to make out a case. No gen- 
tleman should degrade himself, on any grounds, 
to the paltriness of ex-parte argument; and I shall 
not insult Outis at the outset, by assuming for a 
moment that he (Outis) is weak enough, to suppose 
me (Poe) silly enough, to look upon all this abomi- 
nable rigmarole as anything better than a very 
respectable specimen of special pleading. 

As a general rule in a case of this kind, I should 
wish to begin with the beginning, but as I have been 
unable, in running my eye over Outis’s remarks, to 


* T would be a Parody, written by a ninny, 
Not worth a penny, and sold fora guinea, &c. 


LONGFELLOW anpb otHer PLAGIARISTS 119 


discover that they have any beginning at all, I shall 
be pardoned for touching them in the order which 
suits me best. Outis need not have put himself to 
the trouble of informing his readers that he has 
_ “some acquaintance with Mr. Longfellow.” It was 
needless also to mention that he did not know me. 
I thank him for his many flatteries—but of their in- 
consistency I complain. To speak of me in one 
breath as a poet, and in the next to insinuate charges 
of ‘‘carping littleness,” is simply to put forth a flat 
paradox. When a plagiarism is committed and de- 
tected, the word ‘“‘littleness,” and other similar 
words, are immediately brought into play. To the 
words themselves I have no objection whatever; but 
their application might occasionally be improved. 

Is it altogether impossible that a critic be insti- 
vated to the exposure of a plagiarism, or still better, 
of plagiarism generally wherever he meets it, by a 
strictly honorable and even charitable motive? 
Let us see. A theft of this kind is commited—for 
the present we will admit the possibility that a theft 
of this character can be committed. The chances 
of course are, that an established author steals 
from an unknown one, rather than the converse; 
for in proportion to the circulation of the original, 
is the risk of the plagiarism’s detection. The person 
about to commit the theft, hopes for impunity alto- 
gether on the ground of the reconditeness of the 
source from which he thieves. But this obvious 
consideration is rarely borne in mind. We read a 
certain passage in a certain book. We meet a pas- 
sage nearly similar, in another book. The first book 
is not at hand, and we cannot compare dates. We 
decide by what we fancy the probabilities of the 
case. The one author is a distinguished man—our 
sympathies are always in favor of distinction. “‘It 


120 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


is not likely,” we say in our hearts, ‘‘that so distin- 
guished a personage as A. would be guilty of plagia- 
tism from this B. of whom nobody in the world 
has ever heard.” We give judgment, therefore, at 
once against B. of whom nobody in the world has 
ever heard; and it is for the very reason that nobody 
in the world has ever heard of him, that, in ninety- 
nine cases out of the hundred, the judgment so pre- 
cipitously given is erroneous. Now then the plagia- 
rist has not merely committed a wrong in itself— 
a wrong whose incomparable meanness would de- 
serve exposure on absolute grounds—but he, the 
guilty, the successful, the eminent, has fastened 
the degradation of his crime—the retribution which 
should have overtaken it in his own person—upon 
the guiltless, the toiling, the unfriended struggler up 
the mountainous path of Fame. Is not sympathy 
for the plagiarist, then, about as sagacious and ~ 
about as generous as would be sympathy for the 
murderer whose exalted escape from the noose of 
the hangman should be the cause of an innocent 
man’s being hung? And because I, for one, should 
wish to throttle the guilty with the view of letting. 
the innocent go, could it be considered proper on 
the part of any ‘‘acquaintance of Mr. Longfellow’s”’ 
who came to witness the execution—could it be 
thought, I say, either chivalrous or decorous on the 
part of this ‘‘acquaintance”’ to get up against me a 
charge of “‘carping littleness,’”’ while we stood ami- 
cably together at the foot of the gallows? 

In all this I have taken it for granted that such a 
sin as plagiarism exists. We are informed by Outis, 
however, it does not. ‘‘I shall not charge Mr. Poe 
with plagiarism,”’ he says, ‘‘for, as I have said, such 
charges are perfectly absurd.”” An assertion of this 
kind is certainly funny, (I am aware of no other 


LONGFELLOW anp otHEeR PLAGIARISTS gaz 


epithet which precisely applies to it;) and I have 
much curiosity to know if Outis is prepared to swear 
to its truth—holding right aloft his hand, of course, 
and kissing the back of D’Israeli’s ‘‘Curiosities,’” 
or the ‘‘ Mélanges,” of Suard and André. But if the 
assertion is funny (and it zs) it is by no means an 
original thing. It is precisely, in fact, what all the 
plagiarists and all the “‘acquaintances”’ of the pla- 
giarists since the flood, have maintained with a very 
praiseworthy resolution. The attempt to prove, 
however, by reasoning @ priori, that plagiarism can- 
not exist, is too good an idea on the part of Outis 
not to be a plagiarism in itself. Are we mistaken? 
—or have we seen the following words before in 
Joseph Miller, where that ingenious gentleman is 
bent upon demonstrating that a leg of mutton is and 
ought to be a turnip? 


A man who aspires to fame, etc., attempts to win his 
object—how? By stealing, 7m open day, the finest passages, 
the most beautiful thoughts, (no others are worth stealing,) 
and claiming them as his own; and that too when he knows 
that every competitor, etc., will be ready to cry him down 
as a thief, 


Is it possible?—is it conceivable that Outis does. 
not here see the begging of the whole question? 
Why, of course, if the theft had to be committed 
‘tin open day” it would not be committed; and if 
the thief ‘‘knew’’ that every one would cry him 
down, he would be too excessive a fool to make even 
a decent thief if he indulged his thieving propen- 
sities in any respect. But he thieves at night—in 
the dark—and not in the open day, (if he suspects 
it,) and he does not know that he will be detected 
at all. Of the class of wilful plagiarists nine cut of 
ten are authors of established reputation, who plun- 
der recondite, neglected, or forgotten books. 


122 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


“T shall not accuse Mr. Poe of plagiarism,” says 
Outis, ‘‘for, as I have observed before, such charges 
are perfectly absurd’’—and Outis is certainly right 
in dwelling on the point that he has observed this 
thing before. It is the one original point of his es- 
say—for I really believe that no one else was ever 
silly enough to ‘‘observe it before.”’ 

Here is a gentleman who writes in certain respects 
as a gentleman should, and who yet has the effron- 
tery to base a defence of a friend from the charge of 
plagiarism, on the broad ground that no such thing 
as plagiarism ever existed. I confess that to an as- 
sertion of this nature there is no little difficulty in 
getting up a reply. What in the world can a man 
say in a case of this kind?—he cannot of course give 
utterance to the first epithets that spring to his lips 
—and yet what else shall he utter that shall not 
have an air of direct insult to the common sense of 
mankind? What could any judge on any bench in 
the country do but laugh or swear at the attorney 
who should begin his defence of a petty-larceny client 
with an oration demonstrating @ priort that no 
such thing as petty larceny ever had been, or in 
the nature of things, ever could be committed? 
And yet the attorney might make as sensible a 
speech as Outis—even a more sensible one—any- 
thing but aless sensibleone. Indeed, mutato nomine, 
he might employ Outis’s identical words. He 
might say—‘‘In view, gentlemen of the jury, of all 
the glaring improbabilities of such a case, a prose- 
cuting attorney should be very slow to make such 
a charge. I say glaring improbabilities, for it seems 
to me that no circumstantial evidence could be 
sufficient to secure a verdict of theft in such a case. 
Look at it. [Here the judge would look at the 
maker of the speech.] Look at it. A man who 


LONGFELLOW anp otHER PLAGIARISTS 123 


aspires to (the) fame (of being a beau)—who seeks 
the esteem and praise of all the world (of dandies) 
and lives upon his reputation (for broadcloth) 
as his vital element, attemps to win his object— 
how? By stealing in open day the finest waist- 
coats, the most beautiful dress-coats (no others 
are worth stealing) and the rarest pantaloons of 
another, and claiming them as his own; and that 
too when he knows that every competitor for (the) 
fame (of Brummelism) and every fashion-plate 
Magazine in the world, as well as the real owner, 
will be ready to identify the borrowed plumes in 
a moment, and cry him down as a thief. A mad- 
man, an idiot, if he were capable of such an achieve- 
ment, might do it, gentlemen of the jury, but no 
other. ’’ 

Now, of course, no judge in the world whose sense 
of duty was not overruled by a stronger sense of 
the facetious, would permit the attorney to proceed 
with any such speech. It would never do to have 
the time of the court occupied by this gentleman’s 
well-meant endeavor to show @ priort, the im- 
possibility of that ever happening which the clerk 
of this same court could show @ posteriori had been 
happening by wholesale ever since there had been 
such a thing as a foreign count. And yet the speech 
of the attorney was really a very excellent speech, 
when we compare it with that of Outis. For the 
‘“‘slaring improbability” of the plagiarism, is a 
mere nothing by the side of the ‘‘glaring improb- 
ability” of the theft of the sky-blue dress-coat, 
and the yellow plaid pantaloons:—we may take it 
for granted, of course, that the thief was one of the 
upper ten thousand of thieves, and would not 
have put himself to the trouble of appropriating 
any garments that were not of indisputable bon ton, 


I24 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


and patronised even by Professor Longfellow him- 
self. The improbability of the literary theft, I 
say, is really a mere trifle in comparison with the 
broad-cloth larceny. For the plagiarist is either a 
man of no note ora man of note. In the first case, 
he is usually an ignoramus, and getting possession 
of a rather rare book, plunders it without scruple, 
on the ground that nobody has ever seen a copy of it 
except himself. In the second case (which is a 
more general one by far) he pilfers from some poverty- 
stricken, and therefore neglected man of genius, 
on the reasonable supposition that this neglected 
man of genius will very soon cut his throat, or 
die of starvation, (the soone’ the better, no doubt,) 
and that in the meantime he will be too busy in 
keeping the wolf from the door to look after the 
purloiners of his property—and too poor, and too 


cowed, and for these reasons too contemptible, 


under any circumstances, to dare accuse of so base 
a thing as theft, the wealthy and triumphant 
gentleman of elegant leisure who has only done the 
vagabond too much honor in knocking him down 
and robbing him upon the highway. 

The plagiarist, then, in either case, has very reason- 
able ground for expecting impunity, and at all 
events it is because he thinks so, that he perpetrates 
the plagiarism—but how is it with the count who 
steps into the shop of the tailor, and slips under his 
cloak the sky-blue dress coat, and the yellow plaid 
_pantaloons? He, the count, would be a greater 
fool in these matters than a count ever was, if he 
did not perceive at once, that the chances were 
about nine hundred and ninety-nine to one, that he 
would be caught the next morning before twelve 
o'clock, in the very first bloom and blush of his 
promenade down Broadway, by some one of those 


LONGFELLOW anp otHeR PLAGIARISTS 128 


officious individuals who are continually on the qui 
vive to catch the counts and take away from them 
their sky blue coats and yellow plaid pantaloons. 
Yes, undoubtedly; the count is very well aware of 
all this; but he takes into consideration, that 
although the nine hundred and ninety-nine chances 
are certainly against him, the one is just as certainly 
in his favor—that luck is everything—that life is 
short—that the weather is fine—and that if he can 
only manage to get safely through his promenade 
down Broadway in the sky-blue dress coat and 
the yellow plaid pantaloons, he will enjoy the high 
honor, for once in his life, at least, of being mistaken 
by fifteen ladies out of twenty, either for Professor 
Longfellow, or Phoebus Apollo. And this consid- 
eration is enough—the half of it would have been 
more than enough to satisfy the count that, in putting 
the garments under his cloak, he is doing a very 
sagacious and very commendable thing. He steals 
them, then, at once, and without scruple, and, 
when he is caught arrayed in them the next morning, 
he is, of course, highly amused to hear his counsel 
make an oration in court about the ‘“‘glaring improb- 
ability” of his having stolen them when he stole 
them—by way of showing the abstract impossibility 
of their ever having been stolen at all. 

‘‘What is plagiarism?’ demands Outis at the 
outset, avec l’air d’un Romain qui sauve sa patrie— 
‘What is plagiarism, and what constitutes a good 
ground for the charge?” Of course all men 
anticipate something unusually happy in the way 
of reply to queries so cavernously propounded; but 
if so, then all men have forgotten, or no man has 
ever known that Outis is a Yankee. He answers 
the two questions by two others—and perhaps this 
is quite as much as any one should expect him to do, 


126 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


“Did no two man,’’ he says, ‘‘ever think alike 
without stealing one from the other?—or thinking 
alike, did no two men ever use the same or similar 
words to convey the thoughts, and that without 
any communication with each other?—To deny it is 
absurd.’’ Of course it is—very absurd; and the 
only thing more absurd that I can call to mind at 
present, is the supposition that any person ever 
entertained an idea of denying it. But are we to 
understand the denying it, or the absurdity of 
denying it, or the absurdity of supposing that any 
person intended to deny it, as the true answer to 
the original queries. 

But let me aid Outis to a distinct conception 
of his own irrelevance. I accuse his friend, spe- 
cifically, of a plagiarism. This accusation Outis 
rebuts by asking me with a grave face—not whether 
the friend might not, in this individual case, and 
in the compass of eight short lines, have happened 
upon ten or twelve peculiar identities of thought 
and identities of expression with the author from 
whom I charge him with plagiarising—but sim- 
ply whether I do not admit the possibility that 
once in the course of eternity some two individuals 
might not happen upon a single identity of thought, 
and give it voice in a single identity of expression. 

Now, frankly, I admit the possibility in question, 
and would request my friends to get ready for me a 


strait-jacket if I did not. There can be no doubt: — 


in the world, for example, that Outis considers 
me a fool:—the thing is sufficiently plain: and 
this opinion on the part of Outis is what mankind 
have agreed to denominate an idea; and this idea 
is also entertained by Mr. Aldrich, and by Mr. 
Longfellow—and by Mrs. Outis and her seven 
children—and by Mrs. Aldrich and hers—and by 


LONGFELLOW anp oTHER PLAGIARISTS 127 


Mrs. Longfellow and hers—including the grand- 
children and great grand-children, if any, who will 
be instructed to transmit the idea in unadulter- 
ated purity down an infinite vista of generations 
yet to ccme. And of this idea thus extensively 
entertained, it would really be a very difficult thing 
to vary the expression in any material degree. A re- 
markable similarity would be brought about, indeed, 
by the desire of the parties in question to put the 
thought into as compendious a form as possible, by 
way of bringing it to a focus at once and having 
done with it upon the spot. 

Outis will perceive, therefore, that I have every 
desire in the world to afford him that ‘‘fair play”’ 
which he considers ‘‘a jewel,” since I admit not 
only the possibility of the class of coincidences for 
which he contends, but even the impossibility of 
there not existing just as many of these coinci- 
dences as he may consider necessary to make out 
his case. One of the species he details as follows, 
at some length. 


Some years ago, a letter was written from some part of 
New England, describing one of those scenes, not very 
common during what is called “the January thaw,” when 
the snow, mingled with rain, and freezing as it falls, forms 
a perfect covering of ice upon every object. The storm 
clears away suddenly, and the moon comes up. The 
letter proceeds—“ every tree and shrub, as far as the eye can 
reach, of pure transparent glass—a perfect garden of moving, 
waving, breathing crystals... . Every tree 1s a diamond 
chandelier, with a whole constellation of stars clustering to 
every socket,” Gc. This letter was laid away where such 
things usually are, in a private drawer, and did not see 
the light for many years. But the very next autumn 
brought out, among the splendid annuals got up in the 
country, a beautiful poem from Whittier, describing the 
same, or rather a similar scene, in which the line 


The trees, like crystal chandeliers, 


128 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


was put in italics by every reviewer in the land, for the 
exceeding beauty of the imagery. Now the letter was 
written, probably, about the same time with the poem, 
though the poem was not published till nearly a year 
after. The writers were not, and never have been, ac- 
quainted with each other, and neither could possibly have 
seen the work of the other before writing. Now, was there 
any plagiarism here?”’ 

After the fashion of Outis himself I shall answer 
his query by another. What has the question 
whether the chandelier friend committed a plagia- 
rism, to do with the question whether the death- 
bed friend committed a plagiarism, or whether it 
is possible or impossible that plagiarism, generally, 
-can be committed? But, merely for courtesy’s 
sake, I step aside from the exact matter in hand. 
In the case mentioned I should consider material 
differences in the terms of description as more re- 
markable than coincidences. Since the tree really — 
looked like a chandelier, the true wonder would 
have been in likening it to anything else. Of 
course, nine common-place men out of ten would 
have maintained it to be a chandelier-looking tree. 
No poet of any pretension however, would have 
committed himself so far as to put such a similitude 
in print. The chandelier might have been poetically 
likened to the crystallized tree—but the converse 
is a platitude. The gorgeous unaltered handiwork 
of Nature is always degraded by comparison with 
the tawdry gew-gaws of Art—and perhaps the 
very ugliest thing in the world is a chandelier. If 
“every reviewer in the land put the passage into 
Italics on account of the exceeding beauty of the im- 
agery,’’ then every printer’s devil in the land should 
have been flogged for not taking it out of Italics upon 
the spot, and putting it in the plainest Roman— 
which is too good for it by one half. 


LONGFELLOW anp oruer PLAGIARISTS | 129 


I put no faith in the nil admirari, and am apt to 
be amazed at every second thing which I see. One of 
the most amazing things I have yet seen, is the com- 
placency with which Outis throws to the right and 
left his anonymous assertions, taking it for granted 
that because he (Nobody) asserts them, I believe 
them as a matter of course. However—he is 
quite in the right. JI am perfectly ready to admit 
anything that he pleases, and am prepared to put 
as implicit faith in his zpse dixit as the Bishop of 
Autun did in the Bible—on the ground that he knew 

cthing about it at all. We will understand it, then, 
not merely as an anonymous assertion but as an 
absolute fact, that the two chandelier authors 
“were not and never have heen acquainted with 
each other, and that neither could have seen the 
work of the other before writing.’’ We will agree to 
understand all this as indisputable truth, I say, 
through motives of the purest charity, for the 
purpose of assisting a friend out of trouble, and 
without reference to the consideration that no 
third person short of Signor Blitz or Professor 
Rogers could in any conceivable manner have 
satisfied himself of the truth of the twentieth part 
of it. Admitting this and everything else, to be 
as true as the pentateuch, it follows that plagiarism 
in the case in question was a thing that could not 
by any possibility be—and do I rightly comprehend 
Outis as demonstrating the impossibility of plagia- 
rism where it is possible, by adducing instances 
of inevitable similarity under circumstances where 
it is not? The fact is, that through want of space 
and time to follow Outis through the labyrinth 
of impertinences in which he is scrambling about, I 
am constrained much against my sense of decorum, 
to place him in the high-road of his argument, sc 

Vout. VI—9 


130 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


he may see where he is, and what he is doing, and 
what it is that he is endeavoring to demonstrate. 

He wishes to show, then, that Mr. Longfellow is 
innocent of the imitation with which I have charged 
him, and that Mr. Aldrich is innocent of the plagia- 
rism with which I have not charged him; and this 
duplicate innocence is expected to be proved by 
showing the possibility that a certain, or that any 
uncertain series of coincidences may be the result 
of pure accident. Now of course I cannot be sure 
that Outis will regard my admission as a service or a 
disservice, but I admit the possibility at once; and 
not only this, but I would admit it as a possibility 
were the coincidences a billion, and each of the 
most definite peculiarity that human ingenuity 
could conceive. But in admitting this, I admit 
just nothing at all, so far as the advancement of 
Outis’s proper argument is concerned. The affair 
is one of probabilities altogether, and can be 
satisfactorily settled only by reference to their 
Calculus. 

‘‘Pray,” inquires Outis of Mr. Willis, ‘‘did you ever 
think the worse of Dana because your friend John 
Neal charged him with pirating upon Paul Allen, 
and Bryant, too, in his poem of THz Dy1nc RAVEN?” 
I am sincerely disposed to give Outis his due, and 
will not pretend to deny his happy facility in asking 
irrelevant questions. In the present case, we can 
only imagine Mr. Willis’s reply:—‘‘My dear sir,” 
he might say, ‘‘I certainly do not think much the 
worse of Mr. Dana, because Mr. Neal charged him 
with the piracy, but be so kind as not to inquire 
what might have been my opinion had there been 
any substantiation of the charge.’’ I quote Outis’s 
inquiry, however, not so much to insist upon its 
singular luminousness, as to call attention to the ar- 


LONGFELLOW anp otHer PLAGIARISTS 131 


gument embodied in the capital letters of ‘‘THE 
DyInG RAVEN.” 

Now, were I, in any spasm of perversity, to direct 
Outis’s catechetical artillery against himself, and 
demand of him explicitly hzs reasons for causing those 
three words to be printed in capitals, what in the 
world would he do for a reply? As a matter of 
course, for some moments, he would be profoundly 
embarrassed—but, being a true man, and a chival- 
rous one, as all defenders of Mr. Longfellow must be, 
he could not fail, in the end, to admit that they were 
so printed for the purpose of safely insinuating a 
charge which not even an Outis had the impudence 
openly to utter. Let us imagine his thoughts while 
carefully twice underscoring the words. Is it im- 
possible that they ran thus?-—‘‘I am perfectly well 
aware, to be sure, that the only conceivable re- 
semblance between Mr. Bryant’s poem and Mr. Poe’s 
poem, lies in their common reference to a raven; but 
then, what I am writing will be seen by some who 
have not read Mr. Bryant’s poem, and by many 
who have never heard of Mr. Poe’s, and among these 
classes I shall be able to do Mr. Poe a serious injustice 
and injury, by conveying the idea that there is 
really sufficient similarity to warrant that charge of 
plagiarism, which I, Outis, the ‘acquaintance of 
Mr. Longfellow,’ am too high-minded and _ too 
merciful to prefer.”’ 

Now, I do not pretend to be positive that any 
such thoughts as these ever entered the brain of 
Outis. Nor will I venture to designate the whole 
insinuation as a specimen of ‘“‘carping littleness, 
too paltry for any man who values his reputation as 
a gentleman’’; for, in the first place, the whole matter, 
as I have put it, is purely supposititious, and in the 
second, I should furnish ground for a new insinua- 


132 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


tion of the same character, inasmuch as I should be 
employing Outis’s identical words. The fact is, 
Outis has happened upon the idea that the most 
direct method of rebutting one accusation, is to get 
up another. By showing that J have committed a 
sin, he proposes to show that Mr. Aldrich and Mr. 
Longfellow have not. Leaving the underscored 
Dy1nG RAVEN to argue its own case, he proceeds, 
therefore, as follows:— 

Who, for example, would wish to be guilty of the littleness 
of detracting from the uncommon merit of that remarkable 
poem of this same Mr. Poe’s, recently published in the 
Mirror, from the American Review, entitled “ THE RAVEN,” 
by charging him with the paltriness of imitation? And 
yet, some snarling critic, who might envy the reputation he 
had not the genius to secure for himself, might refer to 
the frequent, very forcible, but rather quaint repetition, 
in the last two lines of many of the stanzas, as a palpable 
imitation of the manner of Coleridge, in several stanzas 
of the Ancient Marier. Let me put them together, - 
Mr. Poe says— 


Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore, 
Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore. 


And again— 


It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore— 
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore. 


Mr. Coleridge says, (running two lines into one): 
For all MAE I had killed the bird that made the breeze to 
low, 

**Ah, wretch!’’ said they, ‘“‘the bird to slay, that made the 
breeze to blow. 

And again— 

They all averred I had killed the bird, that brought the fog 
and mist, 

‘°Twas right,’’ said they, ‘‘such birds to slay, that bring the 
fog and mist.” 

The ‘‘rather quaint” is ingenious. Fully one-third 

of whatever effect ‘‘The Raven” has, is wrought by 

the quaintness in question—a point elaborately in- 


LONGFELLOW anp otner PLAGIARISTS 133 


troduced, to accomplish a well-considered purpose. 
What idea would Outis entertain of me, were I to 
speak of his defence of his friends as very decent, 
very respectable, but rather meritorious? In the 
passages collated, there are two points upon which 
the ‘‘snarling critic” might base his insinuation— 
if ever so weak a ‘“‘snarling critic’ existed. Of 
these two points one is purely hypothetical—that is 
to say, it is disingenuously manufactured by Mr. Long- 
fellow’s acquaintance to suit his own purposes—or 
perhaps the purposes of the imaginary snarling critic. 
The argument of the second point is demolished 
by my not only admitting it, but insisting upon it. 
Perhaps the least tedious mode of refuting Outis, is 
to acknowledge nine-tenths of everything he may 
- think proper to say. 

But, in the present instance, what am I called 
upon to acknowledge? I am charged with imi- 
tating the repetition of phrase in the two concluding 
lines of a stanza, and of imitating this from Coleridge. 
But why not extend the accusation, and insinuate 
that I imitate it from everybody else? for certainly 
there is no poet living or dead who has not put in 
practice the identical effect—the well-understood 
effect of the refrain. Is Outis’s argument to the 
end that J have no right to this thing for the reason 
that all the world has? If this is not his argument, 
will he be kind enough to inform me (at his leisure) 
what it zs? Or is he prepared to confess himself 
so absurdly uninformed as not to know that what- 
ever a poet claims on the score of original versifi- 
Cation, is claimed not on account of any individual 
rhythmical or metrical effects, (for none are individ- 
ually original,) but solely on account of the novelty 
of his combinations of old effects? The hypothesis, 
or manufacture, consists in the alteration of Cole- 


134 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


ridge’s metre, with the view of forcing it into a 
merely ocular similarity with my own, and thus of 
imposing upon some one or two grossly ignorant 
readers. I give the verses of Coleridge as they are: 


For all averred, I had killed the bird 
That made the breeze to blow, 

Ah, wretch, said they, the bird to slay, 
That made the breeze to blow. 


The verses beginning, ‘‘They all averred,”’ etc., are 
arranged in the same manner. Now I have taken 
it for granted that it is Outis’s design to impose the 
idea of similarity between my lines and those of 
Coleridge, upon some one or two grossly ignorant 
individuals: at the same time, whoever attempts 
such an imposition is rendered liable at least to the 
suspicion of very gross ignorance himself. The 
ignorance or the knavery are the two uncomfortable 
horns of his dilemma. 

Let us see. Coleridge’s lines are arranged in 
quatrains—mine in couplets. His first and third 
lines rhyme at the close of the second and fourth 
feet—mine flow continuously, without rhyme. His 
metre, briefly defined, is alternately tetrameter 
acatalectic and trimeter acatalectic—mine is uni- 
formly octameter catalectic. It might be expected, 
however, that at least the rhythm would prove to be > 
identical—but not so. Coleridge’s is iambic (varied 
in the third foot of the first line with an anapeest) 
—miine is the exact converse, trochaic. The fact is, 
that neither in rhythm, metre, stanza, or rhyme, 
is there even a single point of approximation through- 
out; the only similarity being the wickedly or sillily 
manufactured one of Outis himself, appealing from 
the ears to the eyes of the most uncultivated classes 
of the rabble. The ingenuity and validity of the 


LONGFELLOW anp orner PLAGIARISTS 138 


manufacture might be approached, although 
certainly not paralleled, by an attempt to show that 
blue and yellow pigments standing unmixed at 
separate ends of a studio, were equivalent to green. 
I say ‘“‘not paralleled,’’ for even the mixing of the 
pigments, in the case of Outis, would be very far, 
as I have shown, from producing the supposititious 
effect. Coleridge’s lines, written together, would 
result in rhymed iambic heptameter acatalectic, 
while mine are unrhymed trochaic octameter cata- 
_lectic—differing in every conceivable circumstance. 
A closer parallel than the one I have imagined, 
would be the demonstration that two are equal 
to four, on the ground that, possessing two dollars, 
a man will have four when he gets an additional 
couple—for that the additional couple is somewhere, 
no one, after due consideration, will deny. 

If Outis will now take a seat upon one of the horns 
of his dilemma, I will proceed to the third variation 
of the charges insinuated through the medium of 
the ‘“‘snarling critic,’ in the passage heretofore 
quoted.* 

The first point to be attended to is the “‘ten to 
one that I never saw it before.’”’ Ten to one that 
I never did—but Outis might have remembered 
that twenty to one I should lke to see it. In 
accusing either Mr. Aldrich or Mr. Hood, I printed 
their poems together and in full. But an anonymous 
gentleman rebuts my accusation by telling me that 
there is a certain similarity between a poem of my 
own and an anonymous poem which he has before 
him, and which he would like to transcribe if it were 
not too long. He contents himself, therefore, with 
giving me, from this too long poem, three stanzas 


*T have before me,’’ to ‘“‘part of such comparison,”’ ante, 
p. 116. 


136 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


which are shown, by a series of intervening asterisks, 
to have been culled, to suit his own purposes, from 
different portions of the poem, but which (again 
to suit his own purposes) he places before the public 
in consecutive connexion! The least that can be 
said of the whole statement is that it is deliciously 
frank—but, upon the whole, the poem will look 
quite as well before me, as before Outis, whose time 
is too much occupied to transcribe it. I, on the 
other hand, am entirely at leisure, and will transcribe 
and print the whole of it with the greatest pleasure 
in the world—provided always that it is not too 
long to refer to—too long to have its whereabouts 
pointed out—as I half suspect, from Outis’s silence 
on the subject, that zt 7s. One thing I will take it 
upon myself to say, in the spirit of prophecy:— 
whether the poem in question is or is not in existence 
(and we have only Nobody’s word that it is,) the 
passages as quoted, are not in existence, except as 
quoted by Outis, who, in some particulars, I main- 
tain, has falsified the text, for the purpose of forcing 
a similarity, as in the case of the verses of Coleridge. 
All this I assert in the spirit of prophecy, while we 
await the forthcoming of the poem. In the mean- 
time, we will estimate the ‘‘identities’’ with reference — 
to the ‘‘Raven” as collated with the passages culled 
by Outis—granting him everything he is weak 
enough to imagine I am in duty bound to grant— 
admitting that the poem as a whole exists—that 
the words and lines are ingenuously written—that 
the stanzas have the connexion and sequence he 
gives them—and that although he has been already 
found guilty of chicanery in one instance, he is at 
least entirely innocent in this. | 
He has established, he says, fifteen identities, 
*fand that, too, without a word of rhythm, metre, 


LONGFELLOW anp otHer PLAGIARISTS 134 


or stanza, which should never form a part of such 
comparison ’’—by which, of course, we are to under- 
stand that with the rhythm, metre, and stanza 
(omitted only because they should never form a 
_ part of such comparison) he would have succeeded 
in establishing eighteen. Now I insist that rhythm, 
metre, and stanza, should form and must form a 
part of the comparison, and I will presently demon- 
strate what I say. I also insist, therefore, since 
he could find me guilty if he would upon these points, 
that guilty he must and shall find me upon the spot. 
He then, distinctly, has established eighteen identi- 
ties—and I proceed to examine them one by one. 
“‘Furst,”’ he says ‘‘in each case the poet is a broken- 
hearted lover.’’ Not so:—my poet has no indication 
of a broken heart. On the contrary he lives tri- 
umphantly in the expectation of meeting his Lenore 
in Aidenn, and is so indignant with the raven for 
maintaining that the meeting will never take place, 
as to call him a liar, and order him out of the house. 
Not only is my lover not a broken-hearted one— 
but I have been at some pains to show that broken 
hearts and matters of that kind are improperly 
made the subject of poems. I refer to a chapter 
of the articles entitled ‘‘Marginalia,’”’ (p.—). ‘‘Sec- 
ond,”’ says Outis, ‘‘that lover longs for some here- 
after communion with the bird.” In my poem 
there is no expression of any such longing—the 
nearest approach to it is the triumphant conscious- 
ness which forms the thesis and staple of the whole. 
In Outis’s poem the nearest approach to the “‘long- 
ing” is contained in the lover’s request to the bird 
to repeat a strain that assures him (the lover,) that 
it (the bird,) has known the lost mistress. ‘‘ Third 
—there is a bird,’”’ says Outis. So there is. Mine 
however is a raven, and we may take it for granted 


138 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


that Outis’s is either a nightingale or a cockatoo. 
‘‘Fourth, the bird is at the poet’s window.” As 
regards my poem, true; as regards Outis’s, not:— 
the poet only requests the bird to come to the window. 
Fifth, the bird being at the poet’s window, makes 
a noise.’ The fourth specification failing, the fifth, 
which depends upon it, as a matter of course fails 
too. ‘Sixth, making a noise attracts the attention 
of the poet.’ The fifth specification failing, the 
sixth, which depends upon it, fails, likewise, and 
as a matter of course, as before. ‘Seventh, [the 
poet] was half asleep, dozing, dreaming.’ False 
altogether: only my poet was “‘napping,” and this 
in the commencement of the poem, which is occupied _ 
with realities and waking action. Outis’s poet is 
fast asleep and dreams everything. ‘‘Ezghth, the 
poet invites the bird to come in.” Another palpable 
failure. Outis’s poet indeed asked his bird in; but 
my raven walked in without any invitation. ‘‘Nznth 
—a confabulation ensues.” As regards my poem, 
true; but there is not a word of any confabulation in 
Outis’s. ‘‘Tenth—the bird is supposed to be a 
visitor from the land of spirits.’”’ As regards Outis’s 
poem, this is true only if we give a wide interpretation 
to the phrase “‘realms of light.” In my poem the 
bird is not only not from the world of spirits, but 
I have specifically conveyed the idea of his having 
escaped from “‘some unhappy master,’”’ of whom 
he had caught the word ‘“‘nevermore”’—in the 
concluding stanza, it is true, I suddenly convert 
him into an allegorical emblem or personification 
of Mournful Remembrance, out of the shadow of 
which the poet is ‘‘lifted nevermore.” ‘‘Eleventh— 
allusion is made to the departed.” Admitted. 
‘‘Twelfth—intimation is given that the bird knew 
something of the departed.” True as _ regards 


LONGFELLOW anp otuer PLAGIARISTS 139 


Outis’s poem only. No such intimation is given 
in mine. ‘“‘Thirteenth—that he knew her worth 
and loveliness.’’ Again—true only as regards Outis’s 
poem. It should be observed here that I have dis- 
proved the twelfth and thirteenth specifications 
purely for form’s sake:—they are nothing more 
than disingenuous repetitions of the eleventh. 
The “‘allusion to the departed”’ zs the ‘‘intimation,”’ 
and the intimation zs that ‘‘he knew her worth and 
loveliness.” ‘‘Fourteenth—the bird seems willing 
to linger with the poet.’’ True only as regards my 
poem—in Outis’s (as quoted) there is nothing of 
the kind. ‘“‘Fzfteenth—there is a repetition, in the 
second and fourth lines, of a part, and that the 
emphatic part, of the first and third.’”’ What is 
here asserted is true only of the first stanza quoted 
by Outis, and of the commencement of the third. 
There is nothing of it in the second. In my poem 
there is nothing of it at all, with the exception of 
the repetition in the refrain, occurring at the fifth 
line of my stanza of six. I quote a stanza—by 
way of rendering everything perfectly intelligible, 
and affording Outis his much coveted ‘‘fair play:’’ 


“ Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!’’ I shrieked, 
upstarting— 

“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian 
shore! 

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath 
spoken! 

Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my 
door! 

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from 
off my door!”’ 

Quoth the raven ‘“‘ Nevermore.”’ 


Sixteenth—concerns the rhythm. Outis’s is iambic 
—mine the exact converse, trochaic. Seventeenth— 


140 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


regards the metre. Outis’s is hexameter, alternating 
with pentameter, both acatalectic.* Mine is octam- 
eter acatalectic, alternating with heptameter cata- 
lectic repeated in the refrain of the fifth verse, and 
terminating with tetrameter catalectic. Eighteenth 
and last has-.respect to the stanza—that is to say, 
to the general arrangement of the metre into masses. 
Of Outis’s I need only say that it is a very common 
and certainly a very stupid one. My own has at 
least the merit of bezng my own. No writer, living 
or dead, has ever employed anything resembling 
it.. The innumerable specific differences between 
it and that of Outis it would be a tedious matter 
to point out—but a far less difficult matter than to 
designate one individual point of similarity. 

And now what are we to think of the eighteen 
identities of Outis—the fifteen that he establishes 
and the three that he could establish if he would— 
that is to say, if he could only bring himself to be 
so unmerciful? Of the whole eighteen, sixteen have 
shown themselves to be lamentable failures—having 
no more substantial basis than sheer misrepresenta- 
tion, “too paltry for any man who values his reputa- 
tion as a gentleman and a scholar,’’ and depending 
altogether for effect upon the chances that nobody 
would take the trouble to investigate their false- 
hood or their truth. Two—the third and the 
eleventh—are sustained: and these two show that 
in both poems there is ‘‘an allusion to the departed,”’ 


*This is as accurate a description as can be given of the 
alternating (of the second and fourth) lines in a few words. 
The fact is, they are indescribable without more trouble than 
they are worth—and seem to me either to have been written 
by some one ignorant of the principles of verse, or to be 
misquoted. The line, however, 

That tells me thou hast seen and loved my Clare, 
answers the description I have given of the alternating verses, 
and was, no doubt, the general ¢ntention for all of them. 


LONGFELLOW anv otner PLAGIARISTS 14+ 


and that in both poems there is ‘‘a bird.’? The 
first idea that suggests itself, at this point, is, whether 
not to have a bird and not to have an allusion to a 
deceased mistress, would not be the truer features 
of distinctiveness after all—whether two poems 
which have not these items might not be more 
rationally charged with similarity than any two 
poems which have. But having thus disproved all 
the identities of Outis, (for any one comprehending 
the principle of proof in such cases will admit that 
two only, are in effect just nothing at ali,) I am 
quite ready, by way again of affording him ‘‘fair 
play,” to expunge every thing that has been said 
on the subject, and proceed as if every one of these 
eighteen identities was in the first bloom and deep- 
est blush of a demonstration. 

I might grant them as demonstrated, to be sure, 
on the ground which I have already touched—that 
to prove me or any body else an imitator, is no 
mode of showing that Mr. Aldrich or Mr. Long- 
fellow is not. But I might safely admit them on 
another and equally substantial consideration, which 
seems to have been overlooked by the zeal of Outis 
altogether. He has clearly forgotten that the mere 
number of such coincidences proves nothing, because 
at any moment we can oblige it to prove too much. 
It is the easiest thing imaginable to suggest—and 
even to do that which Outis has failed in doing—to 
demonstrate a practically infinite series of identities 
between any two compositions in the world—but 
it by no means follows that all compositions in the 
world have a similarity one with the other, in any 
comprehensible sense of the term. J mean to say 
that regard must be had not only to the number 
of the coincidences, but to the peculiarity of each— 
this peculiarity growing less and less necessary, 


i42 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


and the effect of number more and more important, 
in a ratio prodigiously accumulative, as the investiga- 
tion progresses. And again—regard must be had 
not only to the number and peculiarity of the coin- 
cidences, but to the antagonistic differences, if any, 
which surround them—and very especially to the 
space over which the coincidences are spread, and 
the number of paucity of the events, or incidents, 
from among which the coincidences are selected. 
When Outis, for example, picks out his eighteen 
coincidences (which I am now granting as sustained) 
from a poem so long as The Raven, in collation with 
a poem not forthcoming, and which may, therefore, 
for anything anybody knows to the contrary, be 
as long as an infinite flock of ravens, he is merely 
putting himself to unnecessary trouble in getting 
together phantoms of arguments that can have no 
substance wherewith to aid his demonstration, 
until the ascertained extent of the unknown poem 
from which they are culled, affords them a purpose 
and a palpability. Can any man doubt that between 
The Iliad and the Paradise Lost there might be 
established even a thousand very idiosyncratic 
identities?—and yet is any man fool enough to 
maintain that the Iliad is the only original of the 
Paradise Lost? | 

But how is it in the case of Messieurs Aldrich and 
Hood? ‘The poems here are both remarkably brief 
—and as I have every intention to do justice, and 
no other intention in the world, I shall be pardoned 
foragain directing attentiontothem. (Seepage1it1.) 

Let it be understood that I am entirely uninformed 
as to which of these two poems was first published. 
And so little has the question of priority to do with 
my thesis, that I shall not put myself to the trouble 
of inquiring. What I maintain is, that there are 


LONGFELLOW anp oTHER PLAGIARISTS 143 


sufficient grounds for belief that the one is the 
plagiarised from the other :—who is the original, and 
who is the plagiarist, are points I leave to be settled 
by any one who thinks the matter of sufficient con- 
sequence to give it his attention. But the man 
who shall deny the plagiarism abstractly—what 
is it that he calls upon us to believe? First—that 
two poets, in remote parts of the world, conceived 
the idea of composing a poem on the subject of 
Death. Of course, there is nothing remarkable in 
this. Death is a naturally poetic theme, and sug- 
gests itself by a seeming spontaneity to every poet 
in the world. But had the subject chosen by the 
two widely separated poets, been even strikingly 
peculiar—had it been, for example, a porcupine, a 
piece of gingerbread, or anything unlikely to be made 
the subject of a poem, still no sensible person would 
have insisted upon the single coincidence as any 
thing beyond a single coincidence. We have no 
difficulty, therefore, in believing what, so far, we 
are called upon to believe. Secondly, we must 
credit that the two poets concluded to write not 
only on death, but on the death of a woman. Here 
the mind, observing the two identities, reverts to 
their peculiarity or non-peculiarity, and finding 
no peculiarity—admitting that the death of a woman 
is a naturally suggested poetic subject—has no 
difficulty also in admitting the two coincidences— 
as such, and nothing beyond. Thirdly, we are 
called upon to believe that the two poets not only 
concluded to write upon death, and upon the death 
of a woman, but that, from the innumerable phases 
of death, the phase of tranquillity was happened 
upon by each. Here the intellect commences a 
slight rebellion, but it is quieted by the admission, 
partly, of the spontaneity with which such an idea 


144 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


might arise, and partly of the possibility of the 
coincidences, independently of the consideration 
of spontaneity. Fourthly, we are required to 
believe that the two poets happened not only upon 
death—the death of a woman—and the tranquil 
death of a woman—but upon the idea of repre- 
senting this woman as lying tranquilly throughout 
the whole night, in spite of the infinity of different 
durations which might have been imagined for 
her trance of tranquillity. At this point the reason 
perceives the evidence against these coincidences, 
(as such and nothing more,) to be increasing in 
geometrical ratio. It discards all idea of sponta- 
neity, and if it yield credence at all, yields it alto- 
gether on the ground of the indisputable possibility. 
Fifthly—we are requested to believe that our poets 
happened not only upon death—upon the death of a 
woman—upon the tranquil death of a woman— | 
and upon the lying of this woman tranquilly through- 
out the night—but, also, upon the idea of selecting, 
from the innumerable phases which characterize 
a tranquil death-bed, the identical one of soft 
breathing—employing also the identical word. Here 
the reason gives up the endeavor to believe that 
one poem has not been suggested by the other:— 
if it be a reason accustomed to deal with the mathe- 
matical Calculus of Probabilities, it has abandoned 
this endeavor at the preceding stage of the investiga- 
tion. The evidence of suggestion has now become 
prodigiously accumulate. Each succeeding coinci- 
dence (however slight) is proof not merely added, 
but multiplied by hundreds of thousands. Szxthly, 
we are called upon to believe, not only that the 
two poets happened upon all this, together with the 
idea of the soft breathing, but also of employing the 
identical word breathing, in the same line with the 


LONGFELLOW anp otHER PLAGIARISTS 145 


identical word, night. This proposition the reason 
receives with a smile. Seventhly, however, we are 
required to admit, not only all that has been already 
found inadmissible, but in addition, that the two 
poets conceived the idea of representing the death 
of a woman as occurring precisely at the same 
instant, out of all the infinite instants of all time. 
This proposition the reason receives only with a 
sneer. Fzghthly, we are called upon to acquiesce 
in the assertion, that not only all these improbabili- 
ties are probable, but that in addition again, the 
two poets happened upon the idea of representing 
the woman as stepping immediately into Paradise :— 
and, ninthly, that both should not only happen upon 
all this, but upon the idea of writing a peculiarly 
brief poem, on so admirably suggestive a thesis:— 
and, tenthly, that out of the various rhythms, that 
is to say, variations of poetic feet, they should have 
both happened upon the iambus:—and, eleventhly, 
that out of the absolutely infinite metres that may 
be contrived from this rhythm, they should both 
have hit upon the tetrameter acataiectic for the 
first and third lines of a stanza:—and, twelfthly, 
upon the trimeter acatalectic for the second and 
fourth; and, thirteenthly, upon an absolute identity 
of phrase at, fourteenthly, an obsolutely identical 
position, viz.: upon the phrases, ‘‘But when the 
morn,” &c., and, ‘‘ But when the sun,” &c., occurring 
in the beginning of the first line in the last stanza 
of each poem:—and, fifteenthly and lastly, that out 
of the vast multitude of appropriate titles, they 
should both have happened upon one whose identity 
is interfered with at all, only by the difference 
between the definite and indefinite article. 

Now the chances that these fifteen coincidences, 
‘so peculiar in character, and all occurring within 

VoL. VI—10 


146 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


the compass of eight short lines, on the one part, 
and sixteen on the other—the chances, I say, that 
these coincidences are merely accidental, may be 
estimated, possibly, as about one to one hundred 
millions; and any man who reasons at all, is of course 
grossly insulted in being called upon to credit them 
as accidental. 

‘I have written what I have written,” says 
Outis, ‘‘from no personal motives, but simply 
because, from my earliest reading of reviews and 
critical notices, I have been disgusted with this 
wholesale mangling of victims without rhyme or 
reason.’ J have already agreed to believe implicitly 
everything asserted by the anonymous Outis, and 
am fully prepared to admit, even, his own contra- 
dictions, in one sentence, of what he -has insisted 
upon in the sentence preceding. I shall assume 
it is indisputable, then, (since Nobody says it) that 
first, he has no acquaintance with myself and ‘‘some 
acquaintance with Mr. Longfellow,’’ and secondly, 
that he has ‘‘written what he has written from no 
personal motives whatever.’’ That he has been 
disgusted with ‘‘the mangling of victims without 
rhyme or reason,’’ is, to be sure, a little unaccount- 
able, for the victims without rhyme or reason are 
precisely the victims that ought to be mangled; 
but that he has been disgusted ‘‘from his earliest 
reading” with critical notices and reviews, is credible 
enough if we but imagine his ‘‘earliest reading”’ 
and earliest writing to have taken place about the 
same epoch of time. 

But to be serious; if Outis has his own private 
reasons for being disgusted with what he terms the 
‘wholesale mangling of victims without rhyme or 
reason,”’ there is not a man living, of common sense 
and common honesty, who has not better reason 


LONGFELLOW anp orntr PLAGIARISTS 144 


(if possible) to be disgusted with the insufferable 
cant and shameless misrepresentation practised 
habitually by just such persons as Outis, with the 
view of decrying by sheer strength of lungs—of 
trampling down—of rioting down—of mobbing 
down any man with a soul that bids him come out 
from among the general corruption of our public 
press, and take his stand upon the open ground 
of rectitude and honor. The Outises who practice 
this species of bullyism are, as a matter of course, 
anonymous. ‘They are either the ‘‘victims without 
rhyme or reason who have been mangled by whole- 
sale,’ or they are the relatives, or the relatives of 
the relatives of the ‘“‘victims without rhyme or 
reason who have been mangled by wholesale.” 
Their watchwords are ‘‘carping littleness,”’ ‘‘envious 
malignity,’’ and ‘‘personal abuse.” ‘Their low arti- 
fices are insinuated calumnies, and indefatigable 
whispers of regret, from post to pillar, that ‘‘Mr. 
So-and-So, or Mr. This-and-That will persist in 
rendering himself so dreadfully unpopular’’—no 
one, in the meantime, being more thoroughly and 
painfully aware than these very Outises, that the 
unpopularity of the just critic who reasons his way, 
guiltless of dogmatism, is confined altogether within 
the limits of the influence of the victims without 
rhyme and reason who have been mangled by whole- 
sale. Even the manifest injustice of a Gifford 1s, 
I grieve to say, an exceedingly popular thing; and 
there is uo literary element of popularity more 
absolutely and more universally effective than the 
pungent impartiality of a Wilson or a Macaulay. 
In regard to my own course—without daring to 
arrogate to myself a single other quality of either 
of these eminent men than that pure contempt 
for mere prejudice and conventionality which 


148 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


actuated them all, I will now unscrupulously call 
the attention of the Outises to the fact, that it was 
during what they (the Outises) would insinuate to 
be the unpopularity of my ‘‘wholesale mangling 
of the victims without rhyme and reason’’ that, 
in one year, the circulation of the “‘Southern Mes-— 
senger’’ (a five-dollar journal) extended itself from 
seven hundred to nearly five thousand,—and that, in 
little more than twice the same time, ‘‘Graham’s 
Magazine” swelled its list from five to fifty-two 
thousand subscribers. 

I make no apology for these egotisms, and I 
proceed with them without hesitation—for, in 
myself, I am but defending a set of principles which 
no honest man need be ashamed of defending, and 
for whose defence no honest man will consider an 
apology required. The usual watchwords of the 
Outises, when repelling a criticism,—their custo- 
mary charges, overt or insinuated, are (as I have 
already said) those of ‘‘personal abuse”’ and ‘‘whole- 
sale (or indiscriminate) mangling.” In the present 
instance the latter solely is employed—for not even 
an Outis can accuse me, with even a decent show 
of verisimilitude, of having ever descended, in the 
most condemnatory of my reviews, to that personal - 
abuse which, upon one or two occasions, has indeed 
been levelled at myself, in the spasmodic endeavors © 
of aggrieved authors to rebut what I have ventured 
to demonstrate. I have then to refute only the 
accusation of mangling by wholesale—and I refute 
it by the simplest reference to fact. What I have 
written remains; and is readily accessible in any 
of our public libraries. I have had one or two 
impotent enemies, and a multitude of cherished 
friends—and both friends and enemies have been, 
for the most part, literary people; yet no man can 


LONGFELLOW anv otHer PLAGIARISTS 149 


point to a single critique, among the very numerous 
ones which I have written during the last ten years, 
which is either wholly fault-finding or wholly in 
approbation; nor is there an instance to be dis- 
covered, among all that I have published, of my 
having set forth, either in praise or censure, a single 
Opinion upon any critical topic of moment, without 
attempting, at least, to give it authority by some- 
thing that wore the semblance of a reason. Now, 
is there a writer in the land, who, having dealt 
in criticism even one-fourth as much as myself, can 
of his own criticisms, conscientiously say the same? 
The fact is, that very many of the most eminent 
men in America whom I am proud to number among 
the sincerest of my friends, have been rendered so 
solely by their approbation of my comments upon 
their own works—comments in great measure 
directed against themselves as authors—belonging 
altogether to that very class of criticism which it 
is the petty policy of the Outises to cry down, with 
their diminutive voices, as offensive on the score of 
wholesale vituperation and personal abuse. If, 
to be brief, in what I have put forth there has been 
a preponderance of censure over commendation,— 
is there not to be imagined for this preponderance 
a more charitable motive than any which the 
Outises have been magnanimous enough to assign 
me—is not this preponderance, in a word, the 
natural and inevitable tendency of all criticism 
worth the name in this age of so universal an author- 
ship, that no man in his senses will pretend to deny 
the vast predominance of good writers over bad? 


And now, says Outis, for the matter of Longfellow’s 
imitations—in what do they consist?—The critic is not 
very specific in this charge. Of what kind are they? Are 
they imitations of thought? Why not call them plagia- 


150 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


risms then, and show them up? Or are they only verbal 
imitations of style? Perhaps this is one of them, in his 
poem on the “Sea Weed,”’ 





drifting, drifting, drifting, 
On the shifting 
Currents of the restless main. 


resembling in form and collocation only, a line in a beautiful 
and very powerful poem of Mr. Epcar A. Por. (Write 
it rather EpGar, a Poet, and then itis right toa T.) Ihave 
not the poem before me, and have forgotten its title. But 
he is describing a magnificent intellect in ruins, if I remem- 
ber rightly—and, speaking of the eloquence of its better 
days, represents it as 





flowing, flowing, flowing, 
Like a river. 


Is this what the critic means? Is it such imitations as 
this that he alludes to? If not, I am at fault, either in my 
reading of Longfellow, or in my general familiarity with 
the American Poets. If this be the kind of imitation 
referred to, permit me to say, the charge is too paltry for 
any man, who valued his reputation either as a gentleman 
or a scholar. 


Elsewhere he says:— 


Moreover, this poem contains an example of that kind of 
repetition which I have supposed the critic meant to charge 
upon Longfellow as one of his imitations— 


Away—Away—away— &c. 


I might pursue it farther, but I will not. Such criti- 
cisms only make the author of them contemptible, without 
soiling a plume in the cap of his victim. 


The first point to be here observed is the com- 
placency with which Outis supposes me to make 
a certain charge and then vituperates me for his 
own absurd supposition. Were I, or any man, 
to accuse Mr. Longfellow of imitation on the score 
of thrice employing a word in consecutive con- 


LONGFELLOW anp orHer PLAGIARISTS  r51 


nexion, then I (or any man) would only be guilty 
oi as great a sotticism as was Outis in accusing me 
of imitation on the score of the refrain. The repeti- 
tion in question is assuredly not claimed by myself 
as original—I should therefore be wary how I 
charged Mr. Longfellow with imitating it from 
myself. It is, in fact, a musical effect, which is 
the common property of all mankind, and has been 
their common property for ages. Nevertheless 
the quotation of this 





drifting, drifting, drifting, 


is, on the part of Outis, a little unfortunate. Most 
certainly the supposed imitation had never been 
observed by me—nor even had I observed it, should 
I have considered it individually, as a point of any 
moment ;—but all will admit, (since Outis himself 
has noticed the parallel,) that, were a second 
parallel of any obviousness to be established from 
the same brief poem, ‘‘The Sea-Weed,”’ this second 
would come in very strong corroboration of the 
first. Now, the sixth stanza of this very ‘‘Sea- 
Weed” (which was first published in ‘‘Graham’s 
Magazine” for January, 1845) commences with 


From the far off isles enchanted; 


and in a little poem of my own, addressed ‘‘To 
Mary,” and first published at page 636 of the first 
volume of the ‘‘Southern Literary Messenger,” 
will be found the lines: 


And thus thy memory is to me 
Like some enchanted far off isle 
In some tumultuous sea. 


But to show, in general, what I mean by accusing 
Mr. Longfellow of imitation, I collate his ‘‘ Midnight 


152 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Mass for the Dying Year” with ‘‘The Death of the 
Old Year” of Tennyson. 


MIDNIGHT MASS FOR THE DYING YEAR 


Yes, the Year is growing old, 
And his eye is pale and bleared, 
Death, with frosty hand and cold, 
Plucks the old man by the beard, 
Sorely,—sorely! 


The leaves are falling, falling 
solemnly and slow; 
Caw, caw, the rooks are calling; 
It is a sound of wo, 
A sound of wo! 


Through woods and mountain-passes 
The winds, like anthems, roll; 
They are chanting solemn masses, 
Singing, Pray for this poor soul, 
Pray,—pray 


And the hooded clouds, like friars, 
Tell their beads in drops of rain, 
And patter their doleful prayers; 
But their prayers are all in vain, 
All in vain! 


There he stands in the foul weather, 
The foolish, fond Old Year, 
Crowned with wild flowers and with heather 
Like weak, despised Lear, 
A king,—a king! 


Then comes the summer-like day, 
Bids the old man rejoice! 
His joy! his last! O, the old man gray, 
Loveth her ever soft voice 
Gentle and low. 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS anv tue DRAMA 169 
i. 

made, in general, no advances; and Sculpture, 
properly considered, is perhaps the most imitative 
of all arts which have a right to the title of Art at 
all. Looking next at Painting, we find that we 
shave to boast of progress only in the ratio of the 
inferior imitativeness of Painting, when compared 
with Sculpture. As far indeed as we have any 
means of judging, our improvement has been exceed- 
ingly little, and did we know anything of ancient 
Art, in this department, we might be astonished at 
discovering that we had advanced even far less than 
we suppose. As regards Architecture, whatever 
progress we have made, has been precisely in those 
particulars whieh have no reference to imitation :— 
that is to say we have improved the utilitarian and 
not the ornamental provinces of the aft. Where. 
Reason predominated, we advanced; where mere 
Feeling or Taste \ was the guide, we qenairied as we 
were. 

---Coming to the Drama, we shall see that in its 
mechanisms we have made-pfrogress, while in its 
spirituality we have done little or nothing. for 
centuries. certainly—and, perhaps, little or nothing 
for thousands of years. And this is because what 
we term the spirituality of the drama is precisely 
its imitative portion—is exactly that portion which 
distinguishes it as one of the principal of the imita- 
tive arts. 

Sculptors, painters, dramatists, are, from the 
very nature of. theirmaterial,—their spiritual 
material—imitators—conservatists—prone to repose 
in old Feeling and in antique Taste.” For this 
teason—and for this réason” only—the arts of 

| Sculpture,...Painting..and the Drama have not 
_advanced—or have advanced feebly, and bia riley 
in the ratio of their imitativencss.” | 


170 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


But it by no means follows that either has declined. 
All seem to have declined, because they have remained 
stationary while the multitudinous other arts 
(of reason) have flitted so rapidly by them. In 
the same manner the traveller by railroad can 
imagine that the trees by the wayside are retro- 
grading. The trees in this case are absolutely 
stationary—but the Drama has not been altogether 
so, although its progress has been so slight as not 
to interfere with the general effect—that of seeming 
_tetrogradation or décline. 

This seeming retrogradation, however, is to all 
practical intents an absolute one. Whether the 
drama has declined, or whether it has merely 
remained stationary, is a point of no importance, 
so far as concerns the public encouragement of the 
drama; It is ‘unsupported, in_either_case, because— 
it does not deserve support. 

“But if this stagnation; or deterioration, grows 
out of the very idiosyncrasy of the drama itself, 
as one of the principal of the imitative arts, how is 
it possible that a remedy shall be applied—since 
it is clearly impossible to alter the nature of the 
art, and yet leave it the art which it now is? 

We have already spoken of the improvements 
effected in Architecture, in all its utilitarian depart- 
ments, and in the Drama, at all the points of its 
mechanism. ‘‘Wherever Reason predominates we 
advance; where mere Feeling or Taste is the guide, 
we remain as we are.’’ We wish now to suggest 
that, by the engrafting of Reason upon Feeling 
and Taste, we shall be able, and thus alone shall be 
able, to force the modern drama into the production 
of any profitable fruit. 

At present, what is it we do? We are content 
if, with Feeling and Taste, a dramatist does as other 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS anv tas DRAMA 171 


— dramatists have done. The most successful of the. 
more immediately modern~playwiights has been 
Sheridan” Knowles, and-to- play Sheridan Knowles 
~seems to be the highest ambition. of our writers for 
_ the stage. Now the author of. ‘'The..Hunchback,” 
possesses what we are weak enough to term the 
true ‘dramatic feeling,” and this true dramatic 
feeling he has manifested in the most preposterous 
Series of imitations of the Elizabethan drama, by 
which ever mankind were insulted and begulled. 
“Not only did he adhere to the old plots, the old 
characters, the old stage conventionalities through- 
out; but, he went even so far as to persist in the 
—obsolete phraseologies of the Elizabethan period— 
.and just in proportion to his obstinacy and absurdity 
at all points, did we pretend to like him the better, 
_and pretend to consider him a great dramatist. 
Pretend—for every particle of it was pretence. 
Never was enthusiasm more utterly false than that 
which so many “‘respectable audiences’’ endeavored 
to get up for these plays—endeavored to get up, 
first, because there was a general desire to see the 
drama revive, and secondly, because we had been 
all along entertaining the fancy that ‘“‘the decline 
of the drama” meant little, if any thing, else than 
its ‘deviation from the Elizabethan routine—and 
that, consequently, the rettit-of the Elizabethan 
~ routine was, and of necessity must be, the revival 
of the drama. 
~ But if the principles we have been at some trouble 
in explaining, are true—and most profoundly do 
we feel them to be so—if the spirit of imitation is, 
in fact, the real source of drama’s stagnation—and 


if it is so because of the tendency in all imitation — 


oy to render Reason. subservient.to..Feeling and to 
_ Taste—it is clear that only by deliberate counter- 


172 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


acting of the spirit, and of the tendency of the 
spirit, we can hope to succeed in the drama’s revival. 

The first thing necessary is to burn or bury the 
‘fold models,” and-to-forget;-as quickly as possible, 
‘that~ever~a~play~has~been” penned»-The- second. 
thing is to consider de vovo what are the capabilities 
‘of the drama—not merely” what hitherto have been 
‘its conventional purposes. “The third and last point 
has refereriée to the composition of a play (showing 
to’ the fillest extent these capabilities) concéived 
and” constricted with Feeling and with Taste, but 
with Feeling and Taste guided and controlled in 
every particular by the details of Reasori—of"Com= 
“ton Sense—in a word, of a Natural Art.” 

It is obvious, in the meantime, that towards the 
good end in view, much may be effected by dis- 
criminative criticism on what has already been 
done. The field, thus stated, is of course, prac- 
tically illimitable—and to Americans the American 
drama is the special point of interest. We propose, 
therefore, in a series of papers, to take a somewhat 
deliberate survey of some few of the most noticeable 
American plays. We shall do this without refer- 
ence either to the date of the composition, or its 
adaptation for the closet or the stage. We shall 
speak with absolute frankness both of merits and 
defects—our principal object being understood 
not as that of mere commentary on the individual 
play—but on the drama in general, and on the 
American drama in especial, of which each individual 
play is a constituent part. We will commence 
at once with 


TORTESA, THE USURER 


This is the third dramatic attempt of Mr. Willis, 
and may be regarded as particularly successful. 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS ann tuz DRAMA 143 


since it has received, both on the stage and in the 
closet, no stirited measure of commendation. This 
success, as well as the high reputation of the author, 
will justify us in a more extended notice of the play 
than might, under other circumstances, be desirable. 
The story runs thus:—Tortesa, an usurer of 
Florence, and whose character is a mingled web 
of good and evil feelings, gets into his possession 
the palace and lands of a certain Count Falcone. 
The usurer would wed the daughter (Isabella) of 
Falcone not through love, but, in his own words, 


To please a devil that inhabits him— 


in fact, to mortify the pride of the nobility, and 
avenge himself of theirscorn. He therefore bargains 
with Falcone [a narrow-souled villain] for the hand 
of Isabella. The deed of the Falcone property is 
restored to the Count, upon an agreement that the 
lady shall marry the usurer—this contract being 
invalid should Falcone change his mind in regard 
to the marriage, or should the maiden demur—but 
valid should the wedding be prevented through 
any fault of Tortesa, or through any accident not 
springing from the will of the father or child. The 
first scene makes us aware of this bargain, and 
introduces to us Zippa, a glover’s daughter, who 
resolves, with a view of befriending Isabella, to 
feign a love for Tortesa, [which, in fact, she partially 
feels,] hoping thus to break off the match. 

The second scene makes us acquainted with a 
young painter, (Angelo,) poor, but of high talents 
and ambition, and with his servant, (Tomaso,) an 
old bottle-loving rascal, entertaining no very exalted 
opinion of his master’s abilities. Tomaso does 
some injury to a picture, and Angelo is about to 
run him through the body, when he is interrupted 


174 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


by a sudden visit from the Duke of Florence, 
attended by Falcone. The Duke is enraged at the 
murderous attempt, but admires the paintings in 
the studio. Finding that the rage of the great 
man will prevent his patronage if he knows the 
aggressor as the artist, Angelo passes off Tomaso 
as himself, (Angelo,) making an exchange of names. 
This is a point of some importance, as it introduces 
the true Angelo to a job which he had long coveted— 
the painting of the portrait of Isabella, of whose 
beauty he had become enamored through report. 
The Duke wishes the portrait painted. Falcone, 
however, on account of a promise to Tortesa, would 
have objected to admit to his daughter’s presence 
the handsome Angelo, but in regard to Tomaso, 
has no scruple. Supposing Tomaso to be Angelo 
and the artist, the count writes a note to Isabella, 
requiring her ‘‘to admit the painter Angelo.’ The 
real Angelo is thus admitted. He and the lady 
love at first sight, (much in the manner of Romeo 
and Juliet,) each ignorant of the other’s attachment. 

The third scene of the second act is occupied with 
a conversation between Falcone and Tortesa, during © 
which a letter arrives from the Duke, who, having 
heard of the intended sacrifice of Isabella, offers 
to redeem the Count’s lands and palace, and desires 
him to preserve his daughter for a certain Count — 
Julian. But Isabella,—who, before seeing Angelo, 
had been willing to sacrifice herself for her father’s 
sake, and who, since seeing him, had entertained 
hopes of escaping the hateful match through means 
of a plot entered into by herself and Zippa—Isa- 
bella, we say, is now in despair. To gain time, 
she at once feigns a love for the usurer, and indig- 
nantly rejects the proposal of the Duke. The hour 
for the wedding draws near. The lady has pre- 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS anp tHe DRAMA 175 


pared a sleeping potion, whose effects resemble 
those of death. (Romeo and Juliet.) She swallows 
it—knowing that her supposed corpse would lie 
at night, pursuant to an old custom, in the sanctuary 
of the cathedral; and believing that Angelo—whose 
love for herself she has elicited, by a stratagem, 
from his own lips—will watch by the body, in the 
strength of his devotion. Her ultimate design (we 
may suppose, for it is not told,) is to confess all to 
her lover, on her revival, and throw herself upon 
his protection—their marriage being concealed, 
and herself regarded as dead by the world. Zippa, 
who really loves Angelo—(her love for Tortesa, it 
must be understood, is a very equivocal feeling, 
for the fact cannot be denied that Mr. Willis makes 
her love both at the same time)—Zippa, who really 
loves Angelo—who has discovered his passion for 
Isabella—and who, as well as that lady, believes 
that the painter will watch the corpse in the cathe- 
dral,—determines, through jealousy, to prevent 
his so doing, and with this view informs Tortesa 
that she has learned it to be Angelo’s design to steal 
the body, for artistical purposes,—in short as a 
model to be used in his studio. The usurer, in con- 
sequence, sets a guard at the doors of the cathedral. 
This guard does, in fact, prevent the lover from 
watching the corpse, but, it appears, does not prevent 
the lady, on her revival and disappointment in 
not seeing the one she sought, from passing unper- 
ceived from the church. Weakened by her long 
sleep, she wanders aimlessly through the streets, 
and at length finds herself, when just sinking with 
exhaustion, at the door of her father. She has no 
resource but to knock. The Count, who here, we 
must say, acts very much as Thimble of old—the 
knight, we mean, of the ‘‘scolding wife’’—maintains 


176 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


that she is dead, and shuts the door in her face. In 
other words, he supposes it to be the ghost of his 
daughter who speaks; and so the lady is left to 
perish on the steps. Meantime Angelo is absent 
from home, attempting to get access to the cathedral; 
and his servant Tomaso, takes the opportunity of 
absenting himself also, and of indulging his bibulous 
propensities while perambulating the town. He 
finds Isabella as we left her; and through motives 
which we will leave Mr. Willis to explain, conducts 
her unresistingly to Angelo’s residence, and— 


deposits her in Angelo’s bed. ‘The artist now returns ~ 


—Tomaso is kicked out of doors—and we are not 
told, but left to presume, that a full explanation 
and perfect understanding are brought about be- 
tween the lady and her lover. 

We find them, next morning, in the studio, where 
stands leaning against an easel, the portrait (a full 
length) of Isabella, with curtains adjusted before 
it. The stage-directions, moreover, inform us that 
‘“‘the back wall of the room is such as to form a 
natural ground for the picture.’”’ While Angelo is 
occupied in retouching it, he is interrupted by the 
arrival of Tortesa with a guard, and is accused of 
having stolen the corpse from the sanctuary—the 
lady, meanwhile, having stepped behind the curtain. 


The usurer insists upon seeing the painting, with a 


view of ascertaining whether any new touches had 
been put upon it, which would argue an examination, 
post mortem, of those charms of neck and bosom 
which the living Isabella would not have unveiled. 


Resistance is vain—the curtain is torn down; but 


to the surprise of Angelo, the lady herself is dis- 
covered, ‘‘with her hands crossed on her breast, 
and her eyes fixed on the ground, standing motionless 
in the frame which had contained the picture.” 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS anp tHe DRAMA 179 


The tableau, we are to believe, deceives Tortesa, 
who steps back to contemplate what he supposes 
to be the portrait of his betrothed. In the mean- 
time the guards, having searched the house, find 
the veil which had been thrown over the imagined 
corpse in the sanctuary; and, upon this evidence, 
the artist is carried before the Duke. Here he is 
accused, not only of sacrilege, but of the murder of 
Isabella, and is about to be condemned to death, 
when his mistress comes forward in person; thus 
resigning herself to the usurer to save the life of 
her lover. But the nobler nature of Tortesa now 
breaks forth; and, smitten with admiration of the 
lady’s conduct, as well as convinced that her love 
for himself was feigned, he resigns her to Angelo— 
although now feeling and acknowledging for the 
first time that a fervent love has, in his own bosom, 
assumed the place of this misanthropic ambition 
which, hitherto, had alone actuated him in seeking 
her hand. Moreover, he endows Isabella with the 
lands of her father Falcone. The lovers are thus 
made happy. The usurer weds Zippa; and the 
curtain drops upon the promise of the Duke to 
honor the double nuptials with his presence. 

This story, as we have given it, hangs better 
together (Mr. Willis. will. pardon. our modesty) and 
is altogether more easily comprehended, than in 

.the-words-of the play itself. We have really put 
the best face upon the matter, and presented the 
whole in the simplest and clearest light in our power. 
We mean to say that ‘‘Tortesa” (partaking largely, 
in this respect, of the drama of Cervantes and 
Calderon) .is. over-clouded—rendered misty—by a 
world of unnecessary and impertinent intrigue. 

~This folly was adopted by the Spanish comedy, and 
isimitated by us, with the idea of imparting ‘‘action,” 
Vou. VI—12 


178 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


‘“‘business,” ‘‘vivacity.”».But vivacity, however 
desirable, can be attained in many other ways, and. 
is dearly purchased, indeed, when the pricé is 
intelligibility. 

The truth is that cant has never attained a more 
owl-like dignity than in the discussion of dramatic 
principle. A modern stage critic is nothing, if 
not a lofty contemner of all things simple and direct. 
He’ delights in ‘mystery—revels in mystification— 
has transcendental notions concerning P. S, and 
O. P:, and talks about’ “‘stage” business and stage 
effect, % as if he were discussing the.differential 
calculus. For much of all this, we are indebted 
to the somewhat over-profound criticisms of Augus- 
tus William Schlegel. 

But the dicta of common sense are of universal 
application, and, touching this matter of tntrigue, 
if, from its superabundance, we are compelled, even 
in the quiet and critical perusal of a play, to pause 
frequently and reflect long—to re-read _ passages 
over and over again, for the purpose of gathering 
their bearing upon the wholeof maintaining in 
our mind a general connexion—what but fatigue 


can résult from the exertion? How then” when 


Daina bl tas Aone 


we come..to.the: ‘representation, 2—when these pas- 
sages—trifling, perhaps, in. themselves, but important ~ 
whéir Considered in relation to the plot—are hurried 
and blurred“over’ in” the’ stuttering” enunciation ‘of 
some miserable” rantipole, “or “omitted “altogether 
through the constitutional lapse of memory so 

peculiar to those lights of the age and stage, bedight 
~ (from being of no conceivable use) supernumeraries? 
For it must be borne in mind that these bits of 
intrigue (we use the term in the sense of the German 
critics) appertain generally, indeed altogether, to 
the after-thoughts of the drama—to the underplots 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS anp tu—E DRAMA 149 


—are met with, consequently, in the mouth of the 
lacquies and chamber-maids—and are thus con- 
signed to the tender mercies of the stelle minores. 
Of course we get but an imperfect idea of what is 
going on before our eyes. Action after action 
‘ensues whose mystery we cannot unlock without 
_..the little key which these barbarians have thrown 
___away_ and lost. _Our...weariness increases in pro- 
portion to the number of these “embarrassments, ~~ 
“and if the play escape damnation at all, it escapes 
2m spre of that intrigue to which, in nine cases out 
_of ten, the author attributes his success, and which 
he. well persist in valuing exactly in Proportign to 
the misapplied labor it has cost him:” 
~™ But dramas Of this:kind-are.said,.in.our customary 
parlance, to ‘‘abound in plot.’ We have never yet 
met any one, however, who could tell us what 
precise ideas he connected with the phrase. A 
mere succession of incidents, even the most spirited, 
will no more constitute a plot, than a multiplication 
of zeros, even the most infinite, will result in the 
production of a unit. This all will admit—but few 
trouble themselves to think farther. The com- 


mon notion seems to be in favor of mere complexity m 


but’’a’ plot, “properly understood, is perfect only 
Inasmuch as we shall find ourselves unable to detach 
~~from it or disarrange any single incident involved, 
‘Withoutdestruction to the mass. ‘This we say’ is 
“the point of perfection—a point never yet attained, 
but not on that account unattainable. | Practically, — 
we may consider a plot as of high. excellence, when 
‘no one of its component parts shall be susceptible 
of removal without’ detriment to the whole. “Here, 
“indeed, is a vast “loweritig of the demand—and with 
less than this no writer of refined taste should 
content himself. 


180 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


As this subject is not only in itself of great impor- 
tance, but will have at all points a bearing upon 
what we shall say hereafter, in the examination of 
various plays, we shall be pardoned for quoting 
from the ‘‘Democratic Review’’ some passages (of 
our own) which enter more particularly into the 
rationale of the subject: 

‘‘All the Bridgewater treatises have failed in 
noticing the great idiosyncrasy in the Divine system 
of adaptation:—that idiosyncrasy which stamps 
the adaptation as divine, in distinction from that 
which is the work of merely human constructiveness. 
I speak of the complete mutuality of adaptation. 
For example:—in human constructions, a particular 
cause has a particular effect—a particular purpose 
brings about a particular object; but we see no 
reciprocity. The effect does not re-act upon the 
cause—the object does not change relations with 
the purpose. In Divine constructions, the object 
is either object or purpose as we choose to regard it, 
while the purpose is either purpose or object; so 
that we can never (abstractly—without concretion 
—without reference to facts of the moment) decide 
which is which. 

‘‘For secondary example:—In polar climates, the 
human frame, to maintain its animal heat, requires, 
for combustion in the capillary system, an abundant 
supply of highly azotized food, such as train oil. 
Again:—in polar climates nearly the sole food 
afforded man is the oil of abundant seals and whales. 
Now whether is oil at hand because imperatively 
demanded? or whether is it the only thing demanded 
because the only thing to be obtained? It is 
impossible to say:—there is an absolute reciprocity 
of adaptation for which we seek in vain among 
the works of man. 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS anp tot DRAMA 181 


“The Bridgewater tractists may have avoided 
this point, on account of its apparent tendency to 
overthrow the idea of cause in general—consequently 
of a First Cause—of God. But it is more probable 
that they have failed to perceive what no one pre- 
ceding them has, to my knowledge, perceived. 

‘The pleasure which we derive from any exertion 
of human ingenuity, is in the direct ratio of the 
approach to this species of reciprocity between cause 
and effect. In the construction of plot, for example, 
in fictitious literatuté;-we-should-aimat SO arranging 
the points, or incidents, that. we. cannot distinctly 
see, in respect to any one of them,..whether that one 

~deperids from any one other or upholds it. In this 
“Sense, of “course, “perfection of ‘plot is ‘unattainable 
tn fact—becausé’ Man is the constructor. The plots 
of God are perfect. The Universe. i is.a,plot.of.God.” 
“The pleasure” derived from the contemplation 
of the unity resulting from plot, is far more intense 
than is ordinarily supposed, and, as in Nature we 
meet with no such combination of tncident, appertains 
to a very lofty region of the ideal. In speaking thus 
we have not said that plot is more than“an’ adjunct 
to the.drama—more than a Perfectly distinct,.and 
separable source of pleasure. _It is not.an.essential. 
“Tn its intense artificiality it may even be conceived 
_injutious~in~ a certain “degree (unless “constructed 
with consummate “skill) to that real life-lukeness 
“which is the soul of the drama ‘of character. Good 
dramas” have been’ written with very little plot— 
capital dramas might be written with none at all. 
Some plays.of high merit, having plot, abound in 
irrelevant, incident—in incident, we mean, which 
could be displaced or removed altogether without 
effect upon the plot itself, and yet are by no means 
objectionable a as s dramas; and for this reason—that 


182 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


the incidents are evidently irrelevant—obviously 


eT aa 


episodical. Of their digressive nature the spectator 
1S SO immediately aware, that. he views them, as they 
arise, in the simple light of interlude, and does not 
fatigue his attention. .by..attempting to establish 
for them a connexion,~er.more than an illustrative 
connéxion, with the great interests of the subject. 


Such are the plays of Shakspeare. But all this is” 


very different from that irrelevancy of intrigue which 
disfigures and very usually damns the work of the 
unskilful artist. With him, the, great..error-lies-in- 
inconsequence. . Underplot is piled upon, nade 
plot, (the very word.is..a. paradox,)..and all-to no 
purpose—to no.end. ‘The interposed incidents have 
no ultimate effect upon the main ones. They may 
hang upon the mass—they may even coalesce with 
it, or, aS in some intricate cases, they may be so 
intimately blended as to be lost amid the chaos 
which they have been instrumental in bringing 
about—but still they have no portion in the plot, 
which exists, if at all, independently of their influ- 
ence. Yet the attempt_is made by the author to 
establish“and demonstrate_a, dependence—an iden- 
tity; and it is the obyiousness of this attempt. which 
is*the cause of weariness in the spectator, who, of 
course, cannot at once see that his attention is 
challenged to no purpose—that intrigues so obtru- 
‘sively forced upon it, are to be found, in the end, 
without effect upon the leading interests of the 
play. 

‘““Tortesa”’ will afford us plentiful examples of 
this irrelevancy of intrigue—of this misconception 
of the nature and of the capacities of plot. We 
have said that our digest of the story is more easy 
of comprehension than the detail of Mr. Willis. 
If $0, it is because we have forborne to give such 


es ec 


Gx 


“her way from P.S. to O. P., and intrigues persever- 
“ingly from = the footlights to. the.slips...A very 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS anp tHE DRAMA 183 


portions as had no influence upon the whole. These 
served but to embarrass the narrative and fatigue 
the attention. How much was irrelevant is shown 
by the brevity of the space in which we have 
recorded, somewhat at length, all the influential 


incidents of a drama of five acts. There is scarcely 


a scene in which is not to be found the germ of an 
underplot—a germ, however, which seldom proceeds 
beyond the condition of a bud, or, if so fortunate 
as to swell into a flower, arrives, in no single instance, 
at the dignity of fruit. Asppa, a lady..altogether 
without character (dramatic). is the most pertina- 
cious..of..all..conceivable concoctors of plans never 
to be matured—of, vast, designs..that-terminate in 
ridthing—of cul-de-sac machinations. ohe...plots..in 
one page and counterplots in the next, She schemes 


singular instance of the inconsequence of her ma- 


noeuyres is found towards the conclusion of the play. 


The 4 whole of the second scene, (occupying five 


~pages:) in the fifth act, is obviously introduced 


for the purpose of giving her information, through 
Tomaso’s means, of Angelo’s arrest for the murder 
of Isabella. Upon learning his danger she rushes 
from the stage, to be present at the trial, exclaiming 
that her evidence can save his life. We, the audi- 
ence, of course applaud, and now look with interest 
to her movements in the scene of the judgment 
hall. She, Zippa, we think, is somebody after all; 
she will be the means of Angelo’s salvation; she will 
thus be the chief unraveller of the plot. All eyes 
are bent, therefore, upon Zippa—but alas, upon the 
point at issue, Zippa does not so much as open her 
mouth | It is scarcely too much to say that not a 


~sifip gle Aetion of this impertinent..little..busybody.... 


184 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


has any real influence upon the play ;—yet she 
appears upon every occasion—appearing only to 
perplex. 

Similar things abound; we should not have space 
even to allude to them all. The whole conclusion 
of the play is supererogatory. fais immensity of 
pure fuss with which it is overloaded, forces us to 
the reflection that all of it might have been avoided 
by one word.of.explanation to the duke—an amiable 
man who admires the talents. of Angelo, and who, 


io prevent Isabella’s marrying against her will, had. 


previously. offered..to..free Falcone of his bonds to 


_.the usurer. That he would free him now, and thus © 


set all matters straight, the spectator cannot doubt 
for an instant, and he can conceive no better reason 
why explanations are not made, than that Mr. Willis 


does not think proper they should be—lIn fact,~ 


the whole drama is exceedingly ill motcvirt. 

We have already mentioned an inadvertence, in 
the fourth act, where Isabella is made to escape 
from the sanctuary through the midst of guards 
who prevented the ingress of Angelo. Another 
occurs where Falcone’s conscience is made to reprove 
him, upon the appearance of his daughter’s supposed 
ghost, for having occasioned her death by forcing 
her to marry against her will. The author had 
forgotten that Falcone submitted to the wedding, 
after the duke’s interposition, only upon Isabella’s 
assurance that she really loved the usurer. In the 
third scene, too, of the first act, the imagination 
of the spectator is no doubt a little taxed, when he 
finds Angelo, in the first moment of his introduction 
to the palace of Isabella, commencing her portrait 
by laying on color after color, before he has made 
any attempt at an outline. In the last act, more- 
over, Tortesa gives to Isabella a deed 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS anp tuo—E DRAMA 169 


made, in general, no advances; and Sculpture, 
properly considered, is perhaps the most imitative 
of all arts which have a right to the title of Art at 
all. Looking next at Painting, we find that we 
have to boast of progress only in the ratio of the 
inferior imitativeness of Painting, when compared 
with Sculpture. As far indeed as we have any 
means of judging, our improvement has been exceed- 
ingly little, and did we know anything of ancient 
Art, in this department, we might be astonished at 
discovering that we had advanced even far less than 
we suppose. As regards Architecture, whatever 
progress we have made, has been precisely in those 
particulars which have no reference to imitation :— 
that is to say we have improved the utilitarian and 
not the ornamental provinces of the art. Where 
Reason predominated, we advanced; where mere 
Feeling or Taste was the guide, we remained as we 
were. 

Coming to the Drama, we shall see that in its 
mechanisms we have made progress, while in its 
spirituality we have done little or nothing for 
centuries certainly—and, perhaps, little or nothing 
for thousands of years. And this is because what 
we term the spirituality of the drama is precisely 
its imitative portion—is exactly that portion which 
distinguishes it as one of the principal of the imita- 
tive arts. 

Sculptors, painters, dramatists, are, from the 
very nature of their material,—their spiritual 
material—imitators—conservatists—prone to repose 
in old Feeling and in antique Taste. For this 
reason—and for this reason only—the arts of 
Sculpture, Painting and the Drama have not 
-advanced—or have advanced feebly, and inversely 
in the ratio of their imitativencss. 





£70 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


But it by no means follows that either has declined. 


| 


4 


All seem to have declined, because they have remained 
stationary while the multitudinous other arts — 


(of reason) have flitted so rapidly by them. In 


the same manner the traveller by railroad can © 


imagine that the trees by the wayside are retro- 
grading. The trees in this case are absolutely 
stationary—but the Drama has not been altogether 
so, although its progress has been so slight as not 
to interfere with the general effect—that of seeming 
retrogradation or decline. 

This seeming retrogradation, however, is to all 


practical intents an absolute one. Whether the 


drama has declined, or whether it has merely 


remained stationary, is a point of no importance, ~ 


so far as concerns the public encouragement of the © 
drama. It is unsupported, in either case, because — 


it does not deserve support. 


But if this stagnation, or deterioration, grows 
out of the very idiosyncrasy of the drama itself, — 
as one of the principal of the imitative arts, how is | 
it possible that a remedy shall be applied—since ~ 


it is clearly impossible to alter the nature of the 
art, and yet leave it the art which it now is? 
We have already spoken of the improvements 


effected in Architecture, in all its utilitarian depart- 
ments, and in the Drama, at all the points of its — 
mechanism. ‘‘Wherever Reason predominates we — 
advance; where mere Feeling or Taste is the guide, 


99 


we remain as we are. 


We wish now to suggest — 


that, by the engrafting of Reason upon Feeling — 


and Taste, we shall be able, and thus alone shall be 


able, to force the modern drama into the production — 


of any profitable fruit. 
At present, what is it we do? We are content 


if, with Feeling and Taste, a dramatist does as other 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS anp tHe DRAMA 171 


dramatists have done. The most successful of the 
more immediately modern playwrights has been 
Sheridan Knowles, and to play Sheridan Knowles 
seems to be the highest ambition of our writers for 
the stage. Now the author of ‘‘The Hunchback,” 
possesses what we are weak enough to term the 
true ‘“‘dramatic feeling,’ and this true dramatic 
feeling he has manifested in the most preposterous 
series of imitations of the Elizabethan drama, by 
which ever mankind were insulted and begulled. 
Not only did he adhere to the old plots, the old 
characters, the old stage conventionalities through- 
out; but, he went even so far as to persist in the 
obsolete phraseologies of the Elizabethan period— 
and just in proportion to his obstinacy and absurdity 
at all points, did we pretend to like him the better, 
and pretend to consider him a great dramatist. 

Pretend—for every particle of it was pretence. 
Never was enthusiasm more utterly false than that 
which so many “‘respectable audiences’’ endeavored 
to get up for these plays—endeavored to get up, 
first, because there was a general desire to see the 
drama revive, and secondly, because we had been 
all along entertaining the fancy that ‘‘the decline 
of the drama”’ meant little, if any thing, else than 
its deviation from the Elizabethan routine—and 
that, consequently, the return of the Elizabethan 
routine was, and of necessity must be, the revival 
of the drama. 

But if the principles we have been at some trouble 
in explaining, are true—and most profoundly do 
we feel them to be so—if the spirit of imitation is, 
in fact, the real source of drama’s stagnation—and 
if it is so because of the tendency in all imitaticn 
to render Reason subservient to Feeling and to 
Taste—it is clear that only by deliberate counter- 


172 EDGAR ALLAN POE 





acting of the spirit, and of the tendency of the ‘ 
spirit, we can hope to succeed in the drama’s revival. © 


The first thing necessary is to burn or bury the 
‘old models,” and to forget, as quickly as possible, 


that ever a play has been penned. The second ~ 


thing is to consider de novo what are the capabilities 


of the drama—not merely what hitherto have been ~ 


its conventional purposes. ‘The third and last point ’ 


has reference to the composition of a play (showing 


to the fullest extent these capabilities) conceived — 
and constructed with Feeling and with Taste, but — 


with Feeling and Taste guided and controlled in 
every particular by the details of Reason—of Com- 
mon Sense—in a word, of a Natural Art. 


It is obvious, in the meantime, that towards the 


good end in view, much may be effected by dis- — 


criminative criticism on what has already been — 
done. The field, thus stated, is of course, prac- — 
tically illimitable—and to Americans the American 


drama is the special point of interest. We propose, 


therefore, in a series of papers, to take a somewhat — 


deliberate survey of some few of the most noticeable — 
American plays. We shall do this without refer-— 


ence either to the date of the composition, or its 


adaptation for the closet or the stage. We shall © 
speak with absolute frankness both of merits and | 


defects—our principal object being understood © 


not as that of mere commentary on the individual 


play—but on the drama in general, and on the 


American drama in especial, of which each individual - 


play is a constituent part. We will commence 
at once with 


TORTESA, THE USURER 


This is the third dramatic attempt of Mr. Willis, — 


and may be regarded as particularly successful. — 


ear = — 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS anp truzE DRAMA 173 


since it has received, both on the stage and in the 
closet, no stinted measure of commendation. This 
success, as well as the high reputation of the author, 
will justify us in a more extended notice of the play 
than might, under other circumstances, be desirable. 
The story runs thus:—Tortesa, an usurer of 
Florence, and whose character is a mingled web 
of good and evil feelings, gets into his possession 
the palace and lands of a certain Count Falcone. 
The usurer would wed the daughter (Isabella) of 
Falcone not through love, but, in his own words, 


To please a devil that inhabits him— 


in fact, to mortify the pride of the nobility, and 
avenge himself of their scorn. He therefore bargains 
with Falcone [a narrow-souled villain] for the hand 
of Isabella. The deed of the Falcone property is 
restored to the Count, upon an agreement that the 
lady shall marry the usurer—this contract being 
invalid should Falcone change his mind in regard 
to the marriage, or should the maiden demur—but 
valid should the wedding be prevented through 
any fault of Tortesa, or through any accident not 
springing from the will of the father or child. The 
first scene makes us aware of this bargain, and 
introduces to us Zippa, a glover’s daughter, who 
resolves, with a view of befriending Isabella, to 
feign a love for Tortesa, [which, in fact, she partially 
feels,] hoping thus to break off the match. 

The second scene makes us acquainted with a 
young painter, (Angelo,) poor, but of high talents 
and ambition, and with his servant, (Tomaso,) an 
old bottle-loving rascal, entertaining no very exalted 
opinion of his master’s abilities. Tomaso does 
some injury to a picture, and Angelo is about to 
run him through the body, when he is interrupted 


174 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


by a sudden visit from the Duke of Florence, 
attended by Falcone. The Duke is enraged at the 
murderous attempt, but admires the paintings in 
the studio. Finding that the rage of the great 
man will prevent his patronage if he knows the 
ageressor as the artist, Angelo passes off Tomaso 
as himself, (Angelo,) making an exchange of names. 
This is a point of some importance, as it introduces 
the true Angelo to a job which he had long coveted— 
the painting of the portrait of Isabella, of whose 
beauty he had become enamored through report. 
The Duke wishes the portrait painted. Falcone, 
however, on account of a promise to Tortesa, would 
have objected to admit to his daughter’s presence 


the handsome Angelo, but in regard to Tomaso, ~ 


has no scruple. Supposing Tomaso to be Angelo 
and the artist, the count writes a note to Isabella, 


requiring her ‘‘to admit the painter Angelo.”’ The | 


real Angelo is thus admitted. He and the lady 
love at first sight, (much in the manner of Romeo 
and Juliet,) each ignorant of the other’s attachment. 

The third scene of the second act is occupied with 
a conversation between Falcone and Tortesa, during 
which a letter arrives from the Duke, who, having 
heard of the intended sacrifice of Isabella, offers 
to redeem the Count’s lands and palace, and desires 
him to preserve his daughter for a certain Count 
Julian. But Isabella,—who, before seeing Angelo, 
had been willing to sacrifice herself for her father’s 
sake, and who, since seeing him, had entertained 


hopes of escaping the hateful match through means — 


of a plot entered into by herself and Zippa—Isa- 
bella, we say, is now in despair. To gain time, 
she at once feigns a love for the usurer, and indig- 
nantly rejects the proposal of the Duke. The hour 
for the wedding draws near. The lady has pre- 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS anp tHE DRAMA 175 


pared a sleeping potion, whose effects resemble 
those of death. (Romeo and Juliet.) She swallows 
it—knowing that her supposed corpse would lie 
at night, pursuant to an old custom, in the sanctuary 
of the cathedral; and believing that Angelo—whose 
love for herself she has elicited, by a stratagem, 
from his own lips—will watch by the body, in the 
strength of his devotion. Her ultimate design (we 
may suppose, for it is not told,) is to confess all to 
her lover, on her revival, and throw herself upon 
his protection—their marriage being concealed, 
and herself regarded as dead by the world. Zippa, 
who really loves Angelo—(her love for Tortesa, it 
must be understood, is a very equivocal feeling, 
for the fact cannot be denied that Mr. Willis makes 
her love both at the same time)—Zippa, who really 
loves Angelo—who has discovered his passion for 
Isabella—and who, as well as that lady, believes 
that the painter will watch the corpse in the cathe- 
dral,—determines, through jealousy, to prevent 
his so doing, and with this view informs Tortesa 
that she has learned it to be Angelo’s design to steal 
the body, for artistical .purposes,—in short as a 
model to be used in his studio. ‘The usurer, in con- 
sequence, sets a guard at the doors of the cathedral. 
This guard does, in fact, prevent the lover from 
watching the corpse, but, it appears, does not prevent 
the lady, on her revival and disappointment in 
not seeing the one she sought, from passing unper- 
ceived from the church. Weakened by her long 
sleep, she wanders aimlessly through the streets, 
and at length finds herself, when just sinking with 
exhaustion, at the door of her father. She has no 
resource but to knock. The Count, who here, we 
must say, acts very much as Thimble of old—the 
knight, we mean, of the ‘‘scolding wife””—maintains 


176 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


that she is dead, and shuts the door in her face. In 
other words, he supposes it to be the ghost of his 
daughter who speaks; and so the lady is left to 
perish on the steps. Meantime Angelo is absent 
from home, attempting to get access to the cathedral; 
and his servant Tomaso, takes the opportunity of 
absenting himself also, and of indulging his bibulous 
propensities while perambulating the town. He 
finds Isabella as we left her; and through motives 
which we will leave Mr. Willis to explain, conducts 
her unresistingly to Angelo’s residence, and— 
deposits her in Angelo’s bed. ‘The artist now returns 
—Tomaso is kicked out of doors—and we are not 
told, but left to presume, that a full explanation 
and perfect understanding are brought about be- — 
tween the lady and her lover. 

We find them, next morning, in the studio, where 
stands leaning against an easel, the portrait (a full. 
length) of Isabella, with curtains adjusted before — 
it. The stage-directions, moreover, inform us that 
‘“‘the back wall of the room is such as to form a 
natural ground for the picture.’ While Angelo is 
occupied in retouching it, he is interrupted by the 
arrival of Tortesa with a guard, and is accused of 
having stolen the corpse from the sanctuary—the 
lady, meanwhile, having stepped behind the curtain. 
The usurer insists upon seeing the painting, with a 
view of ascertaining whether any new touches had ~ 
been put upon it, which would argue an examination, 
post mortem, of those charms of neck and bosom 
which the living Isabella would not have unveiled. 
Resistance is vain—the curtain is torn down; but 
to the surprise of Angelo, the lady herself is dis- 
covered, ‘‘with her hands crossed on her breast, 
and her eyes fixed on the ground, standing motionless 
in the frame which had contained the picture.” 





LONGFELLOW, WILLIS anp tuz DRAMA 179 


The tableau, we are to believe, deceives Tortesa, 
who steps back to contemplate what he supposes 
to be the portrait of his betrothed. In the mean- 
time the guards, having searched the house, find 
_ the veil which had been thrown over the imagined 
corpse in the sanctuary; and, upon this evidence, 
the artist is carried before the Duke. Here he is 
accused, not only of sacrilege, but of the murder of 
Isabella, and is about to be condemned to death, 
when his mistress comes forward in person; thus 
resigning herself to the usurer to save the life of 
her lover. But the nobler nature of Tortesa now 
breaks forth; and, smitten with admiration of the 
lady’s conduct, as well as convinced that her love 
for himself was feigned, he resigns her to Angelo— 
although now feeling and acknowledging for the 
first time that a fervent love has, in his own bosom, 
assumed the place of this misanthropic ambition 
which, hitherto, had alone actuated him in seeking 
her hand. Moreover, he endows Isabella with the 
lands of her father Falcone. The lovers are thus 
made happy. The usurer weds Zippa; and the 
curtain drops upon the promise of the Duke to 
honor the double nuptials with his presence. 

This story, as we have given it, hangs better 
together (Mr. Willis will pardon our modesty) and 
is altogether more easily comprehended, than in 
the words of the play itself. We have really put 
the best face upon the matter, and presented the 
whole in the simplest and clearest light in our power. 
We mean to say that ‘‘Tortesa”’ (partaking largely, 
in this respect, of the drama of Cervantes and 
Calderon) is over-clouded—rendered misty—by a 
world of unnecessary and impertinent <ntrigue. 
This folly was adopted by the Spanish comedy, and 
is imitated by us, with the idea of imparting ‘‘action,”’ 

Vou. VI—12 


178 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


‘‘business,’” ‘‘vivacity.”’ But vivacity, however 
desirable, can be attained in many other ways, and 
is dearly purchased, indeed, when the price is 
intelligibility. 

The truth is that cant has never attained a more 
owl-like dignity than in the discussion of dramatic 
principle. A modern stage critic is nothing, if 
not a lofty contemner of all things simple and direct. 
He delights in mystery—revels in mystification— 
has transcendental notions concerning P. §. and 
O. P., and talks about ‘‘stage business and stage 
effect,” as if he were discussing the differential 
calculus. For much of all this, we are indebted 
to the somewhat over-profound criticisms of Augus- 
tus William Schlegel. 

But the dicta of common sense are of universal 
application, and, touching this matter of tnirigue, 
if, from its superabundance, we are compelled, even | 
in the quiet and critical perusal of a play, to pause 
frequently and reflect long—to re-read passages 
over and over again, for the purpose of gathering 
their bearing upon the whole—of maintaining in 
our mind a general connexion—what but fatigue 
can result from the exertion? How then when 
we come to the representation?—when these pas- 
sages—trifling, perhaps, in themselves, but important 
when considered in relation to the plot—are hurried 
and blurred over in the stuttering enunciation of 
some miserable rantipole, or omitted altogether 
through the constitutional lapse of memory so 
peculiar to those lights of the age and stage, bedight 
(from being of no conceivable use) supernumeraries? 
For it must be borne in mind that these bits of 
intrigue (we use the term in the sense of the German 
critics) appertain generally, indeed altogether, to 
the after-thoughts of the drama—to the underplots 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS anp tut DRAMA 179 


—are met with, consequently, in the mouth of the 
lacquies and chamber-maids—and are thus con- 
signed to the tender mercies of the stelle minores. 
Of course we get but an imperfect idea of what is 
going on before our eyes. Action after action 
ensues whose mystery we cannot unlock without 
the little key which these barbarians have thrown 
away and lost. Our weariness increases in: pro- 
portion to the number of these embarrassments, 
and if the play escape damnation at all, it escapes 
in spite of that intrigue to which, in nine cases out 
of ten, the author attributes his success, and which 
he will persist in valuing exactly in proportion to 
the misapplied labor it has cost him. 

But dramas of this kind are said, in our customary 
parlance, to “‘abound in plot.’’ We have never yet 
met any one, however, who could tell us what 
precise ideas he connected with the phrase. A 
mere succession of incidents, even the most spirited, 
will no more constitute a plot, than a multiplication 
of zeros, even the most infinite, will result in the 
production of a unit. This all will admit—but few 
trouble themselves to think farther. The com- 
mon notion seems to be in favor of mere complexity; 
but a plot, properly understood, is perfect only 
inasmuch as we shall find ourselves unable to detach 
from it or disarrange any single incident involved, 
without destruction to the mass. This we say is 
the point of perfection—a point never yet attained, 
but not on that account unattainable. Practically, 
we may consider a plot as of high excellence, when 
no one of its component parts shall be susceptible 
of removal without detriment to the whole. Here, 
indeed, is a vast lowering of the demand—and with 
less than this no writer of refined taste should 
content himself. 


180 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


As this subject is not only in itself of great impor- 
tance, but will have at all points a bearing upon 
what we shall say hereafter, in the examination of 
various plays, we shall be pardoned for quoting 
from the ‘‘Democratic Review” some passages (of 
our own) which enter more particularly into the 
rationale of the subject: 

‘‘All the Bridgewater treatises have failed in 
noticing the great idiosyncrasy in the Divine system 
of adaptation:—that idiosyncrasy which stamps 
the adaptation as divine, in distinction from that 
which is the work of merely human constructiveness. 
I speak of the complete mutuality of adaptation. 
For example:—in human constructions, a particular 
cause has a particular effect—a particular purpose 
brings about a particular object; but we see no 
reciprocity. ‘The effect does not re-act upon the 
cause—the object does not change relations with 
the purpose. In Divine constructions, the object 
is either object or purpose as we choose to regard it, 
while the purpose is either purpose or object; so 
that we can never (abstractly—without concretion 
—without reference to facts of the moment) decide 
which is which. 

‘“‘For secondary example:—In polar climates, the 
human frame, to maintain its animal heat, requires, 
for combustion in the capillary system, an abundant 
supply of highly azotized food, such as train oil. 
Again:—in polar climates nearly the sole food 
afforded man is the oil of abundant seals and whales. 
Now whether is oil at hand because imperatively 
demanded? or whether is it the only thing demanded 
because the only thing to be obtained? It is 
impossible to say:—there is an absolute reciprocity 
of adaptation for which we seek in vain among 
the works of man. 


LONGYPELLOW, WILLIS anp toe DRAMA 181 


“The Bridgewater tractists may have avoided 
this point, on account of its apparent tendency to 
overthrow the idea of cause in general—consequently 
of a First Cause—of God. But it is more probable 
that they have failed to perceive what no one pre- 
ceding them has, to my knowledge, perceived. 

‘The pleasure which we derive from any exertion 
of human ingenuity, is in the direct ratio of the 
approach to this species of reciprocity between cause 
and effect. In the construction of plot, for example, 
in fictitious literature, we should aim at so arranging 
the points, or incidents, that we cannot distinctly 
see, in respect to any one of them, whether that one 
depends from any one other or upholds it. In this 
sense, of course, perfection of plot is unattainable 
in fact—because Man is the constructor. The plots 
of God are perfect. The Universe is a plot of God.”’ 

The pleasure derived from the contemplation 
of the unity resulting from plot, is far more intense 
than is ordinarily supposed, and, as in Nature we 
meet with no such combination of zncident, appertains 
to a very lofty region of the ideal. In speaking thus 
we have not said that plot is more than an adjunct 
to the drama—more than a perfectly distinct and 
separable source of pleasure. It is not an essential. 
In its intense artificiality it may even be conceived 
injurious in a certain degree (unless constructed 
with consummate skill) to that real lfe-likeness 
which is the soul of the drama of character. Good 
dramas have been written with very little plot— 
capital dramas might be written with none at all. 
Some plays of high merit, having plot, abound in 
irrelevant incident—in incident, we mean, which 
could be displaced or removed altogether without 
effect upon the plot itself, and yet are by no means 
objectionable as dramas; and for this reason—that 


182 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


the incidents are evidently irrelevant—obviously 
episodical. Of their digressive nature the spectator 
is so immediately aware, that he views them, as they 
arise, in the simple light of interlude, and does not 
fatigue his attention by attempting to establish 
for them a connexion, or more than an illustrative 
connexion, with the great interests of the subject. 
Such are the plays of Shakspeare. But all this is 
very different from that irrelevancy of intrigue which 
disfigures and very usually damns the work of the 
unskilful artist. With him the great error lies in 
anconsequence. Underplot is piled upon under- 
plot, (the very word is a paradox,) and all to no 
purpose—to no end. The interposed incidents have 
no ultimate effect upon the main ones. They may 
hang upon the mass—they may even coalesce with 
it, Of, aS in some intricate cases, they may be so 
intimately blended as to be lost amid the chaos 
which they have been instrumental in bringing 
about—but still they have no portion in the plot, 
which exists, if at all, independently of their influ- 
ence. Yet the attempt is made by the author to 
establish and demonstrate a dependence—an iden- 
tity; and it is the obviousness of this attempt which 
is the cause of weariness in the spectator, who, of 
course, cannot at once see that his attention is 
challenged to no purpose—that intrigues so obtru- 
sively forced upon it, are to be found, in the end, 
without effect upon the leading interests of the 
play. 

‘““Tortesa” will afford us plentiful examples of 
this irrelevancy of intrigue—of this misconception 
of the nature and of the capacities of plot. We 
have said that our digest of the story is more easy 
of comprehension than the detail of Mr. Willis. 
If so, it is because we have forborne to give such 





LONGFELLOW, WILLIS snp tut DRAMA 183 


portions as had no influence upon the whole. These 
served but to embarrass the narrative and fatigue 
the attention. How much was irrelevant is shown 
by the brevity of the space in which we have 
recorded, somewhat at length, all the influential 
incidents of a drama of five acts. There is scarcely 
a scene in which is not to be found the germ of an 
underplot—a germ, however, which seldom proceeds 
beyond the condition of a bud, or, if so fortunate 
as to swell into a flower, arrives, in no single instance, 
at the dignity of fruit. Zippa, a lady altogether 
without character (dramatic) is the most pertina- 
cious of all conceivable concoctors of plans never 
to be matured—of vast designs that terminate in 
nothing—of cul-de-sac machinations. She plots in 
one page and counterplots in the next. She schemes 
her way from P. S. to O. P., and intrigues persever- 
ingly from the footlights to the slips. A very 
singular instance of the inconsequence of her ma- 
noeuvres is found towards the conclusion of the play. 
The whole of the second scene, (occupying five 
pages,) in the fifth act, is obviously introduced 
for the purpose of giving her information, through 
Tomaso’s means, of Angelo’s arrest for the murder 
of Isabella. Upon learning his danger she rushes 
from the stage, to be present at the trial, exclaiming 
that her evidence can save his life. We, the audi- 
ence, of course applaud, and now look with interest 
to her movements in the scene of the judgment 
hall. She, Zippa, we think, is somebody after all; 
she will be the means of Angelo’s salvation; she will 
thus be the chief unraveller of the plot. All eyes 
are bent, therefore, upon Zippa—but alas, upon the | 
point at issue, Zippa does not so much as open her 
mouth. It is scarcely too much to say that not a 
single action of this impertinent little busybody 


184 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


has any real influence upon the play;—yet she 
appears upon every occasion—appearing only to 
perplex. 

Similar things abound; we should not have space 
even to allude to them all. The whole conclusion 
of the play is supererogatory. The immensity of 
pure fuss with which it is overloaded, forces us to 
the reflection that all of it might have been avoided 
by one word of explanation to the duke—an amiable 
man who admires the talents of Angelo, and who, 
to prevent Isabella’s marrying against her will, had 
previously offered to free Falcone of his bonds to 
the usurer. That he would free him now, and thus 
set all matters straight, the spectator cannot doubt 
for an instant, and he can conceive no better reason 
why explanations are not made, than that Mr. Willis 
does not think proper they should be—TIn fact, 
the whole drama is «xceedingly ill moztzvzrt. 

We have already mentioned an inadvertence, in 
the fourth act, where Isabella is made to escape 
from the sanctuary through the midst of guards 
who prevented the ingress of Angelo. Another 
occurs where Falcone’s conscience is made to reprove 
him, upon the appearance of his daughter’s supposed 
ghost, for having occasioned her death by forcing 
her to marry against her will, The author had 
forgotten that Falcone submitted to the wedding, 
after the duke’s interposition, only upon Isabella’s 
assurance that she really loved the usurer. In the 
third scene, too, of the first act, the imagination 
of the spectator is no doubt a little taxed, when he 
finds Angelo, in the first moment of his introduction 
to the palace of Isabella, commencing her portrait 
by laying on color after color, before he has made 
any attempt at an outline. In the last act, more- 
over, Tortesa gives to Isabella a deed 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS ann tuz DRAMA 185 


Of the Falcone palaces and lands, 
And all the money forfeit by Falcone. 


This is a terrible blunder, and the more important 
as upon this act of the usurer depends the develop- 
ment of his new-born sentiments of honor and 

virtue—depends, in fact, the most salient point of 
the play. Tortesa, we say, gives to Isabella the 
lands forfeited by Falcone; but Tortesa was surely 
not very generous in giving what, clearly, was not 
his own to give. Falcone had not forfeited the 
deed, which had been restored to him by the usurer, 
and which was then in his (Falcone’s) possession. 
Hear Tortesa: 


He put it in the bond, 
That if, by any humor of my own, 
Or accident that came not from himself, 
Or from his daughter's will, the match were marred, 
Hts tenure stood tntact. 


Now Falcone is still resolute for the match; but 
this new’generous’“‘humor” of Tortesa induces 
him:.(Tortesa) to decline. it... Falcone’s. tenure. is 
thetrititact; he retains the deed, the usurer is giving 
away ‘property not his own. 

“As a drama of. character). ‘Tortesa”is by no 
means open ‘to so many objections as when we 
view it in the light of its plot; but it is still faulty. 
pthc, merits. are so exceedingly negative, that it is 
- difficult to say anything about them. The Duke 
is nobody; Falcone, nothing; Zippa, less” than 
“nothing. Angelo “may be’ regarded’ ‘simply’ asthe 
““nedium. through, which’ Mr.” Willis conveys to the 
reader his own glowing feelings—his own refined 
‘and  délicate»faney—(delicate,yet bold)—his own 
rich voluptuousness of sentiment—a voluptuousness 
which would offend in almost any other language 


(86 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


than that in which it is so skilfully apparelled. 
Isabella is—the heroine of the Hunchback. The 


revolution in the character of Tortesa—or rather 


thé’final triumph of his innate virtue—is a dramatic 
point-farolder than the hills, It may be observed, 
too; that although the representation of no human 
character should be quarrelled with for its incon- 
sistency, we yet require that the inconsistencies 
be not absolute antagonisms to the extent of neutrali- 
zation: they may be permitted to be oils and waters, 
but they must not be alkalies and acids. When, 
in the course of the dénouement, the usurer bursts 
forth into an eloquence virtue-inspired, we cannot 
sympathize very heartily in his fine speeches, since 
they proceed from the mouth of the self-same egotist 
who, urged by a disgusting vanity, uttered so many 
sotticisms (about his fine legs, &c.) in the earlier 
passages of the play. Tomaso is, upon the whole, 
the best personage. We recognise some originality 
in his conception, and conception was seldom more 
admirably carried out. 

One or two observations at random. In the 
third scene of the fifth act, Tomaso, the buffoon, is 
made to assume paternal authority over. Isabella, 
(as usual, without sufficient purpose,) by virtue of a 
law which Tortesa thus expounds: 


My gracious liege, there is a law in Florence, 
That if a father, for no guilt or shame, 
Disown and shut his door upon his daughter 
She is the child of him who succors her, 
Who by the shelter of a single night, 
Becomes endowed with the authority 

Lost by the other. 


No one, of course, can be made to believe that 
any such stupid law as this ever existed either in 


Florence or Timbuctoo; but, on the ground que le 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS anp THE DRAMA 187 


_vrat West pas..toujours-le-vraisemblable, we say that 
‘even its real existence would be no justification 
of Mr. Willis. It has an air of the far-fetched—of 
the desperate—which a fine taste will avoid as a 
pestilence. Very much of the same nature is the 
attempt of Tortesa to extort a second bond from 
Falcone. The evidence which convicts Angelo 
of murder is ridiculously frail. The idea of Isa- 
bella’s assuming the place of the portrait, and so 
deceiving the usurer, is not-only glaringly improb- 
able; but-seems adopted from the “ Winter’s Tale.”’ 
~But-in this latter play, the deception is at least 
-»possible, for the human figure but imitates a statue. 
What, however, are we to make of Mr. W.’s stage 
direction about the back wall’s being ‘“‘so arranged 
as to form a natural ground for the picture?’”’ Of 
course, the very slightest movement of Tortesa 
(and he makes many) would have annihilated the 
illusion by disarranging the perspective; and in no 
manner could this latter have been arranged at all 
for more than one particular point of view—in 
other words, for more than one particular person 
in the whole audience. . The “‘asides,’’ moreover, 
are unjustifiably frequent. The prevalence of this 
folly (of speaking aside) detracts as much from the 
acting merit of.our drama generally, as any other 
inartisticality......t...utterly,, destroys...verisimilitude. 
_ People are not in the habit of soliloquizing. aloud— 
“at least, not to any positive extent; and why should 
an author have to be told, what the slightest reflec- 
tion would teach him, that an ETN by dint 
of no imagination, can or will conceive that what 
is sonorous in their own ears at the distance of 
fifty feet, cannot be heard by an actor at the distance 
of one or two?.... 

Having ‘spoken ‘thus of “Tortesa” in terms of 


188 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


nearly unmitigated censure—our. readers. may be 
surprised to hear us say that we think highly of 
the drama as a whole—and have little hesitation 
in ranking it before most of the dramas of Sheridan 
Knowles. Its leading fatilts are those of the modern 
drama generally—they are not peculiar to itself— 
while its great merits are. If in support of out 
opinion, we do not cite points of commendation, 
it is because those form the mass of the work. 
And were we to speak of fine passages, we should 
speak of the entire play. Nor by ‘‘fine passages” 
do we mean passages of merely fine language, 
embodying fine sentiment, but such as are replete 
with truthfulness, and teem with the loftiest qualities 
of the dramatic art. Points—capital points abound; 
and these have far more to do with the general 
excellence of a play, than a too speculative criticism 
has been willing to admit. Upon the whole, we 
are proud of ‘‘Tortesa’’—and here again, for the 
fiftieth time at least, record our warm admiration 
of the abilities of Mr..Wallis. 
We proceed now to Mr. Longfellow’s 


SPANISH STUDENT 


The reputation of its author as a poet, and as a 
graceful writer of prose, is, of course, long and 
deservedly established—but as a dramatist he was 
unknown before the publication of this play. Upon 
its original appearance, in ‘‘Graham’s Magazine,” 
the general opinion was greatly in favor—if not 
exactly of ‘“‘The Spanish Student”—at all events 
of the writer of Outre-Mer. But this general 
opinion is the most equivocal thing in the world. 
It is never self-formed. It has very seldom indeed 
an original development. In regard to the work 
of an already famous or infamous author it decides, 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS anp tHzE DRAMA 189 


to be sure, with a laudable promptitude; making 
up all the mind that it has, by reference to the 
reception of the author’s immediately previous 
publication ;—making up thus the ghost of a mind 
pro tem.—a species of critical shadow, that fully 
answers, nevertheless, all the purposes of a substance 
itself, until the substance itself shall be forthcoming. 
But, beyond this point, the general opinion can only 
be considered that of the public, as a man may call 
a book his, having bought it. When a new writer 
arises, the shop of the true, thoughtful, or critical 
opinion, is not simultaneously thrown away—is 
not immediately set up. Some weeks elapse; and, 
during this interval, the public, at a loss where to 
procure an opinion of the débutante, have necessarily 
no opinion of him at all, for the nonce. 

The popular voice, then, which ran so much in 
favor of “‘The Spanish Student,” upon its original 
issue, should be looked upon as merely the ghost 
pro tem.—as based upon critical decisions respecting 
the previous works of the author—as having refer- 
ence in no manner to ‘“‘The Spanish Student” 
itselfi—and thus as utterly meaningless and valueless 
per se. 

The few—by which we mean those who think, 
in contradistinction from the many who think they 
think—the few who think at first hand, and thus 
twice before speaking at all—these received the play 
with a commendation somewhat less prononcée— 
somewhat more guardedly qualified—than Pro- 
fessor Longfellow might have desired, or may have 
been taught to expect. Still the composition was 
approved upon the whole. The few words of 
censure were very far, indeed, from amounting to 
condemnation. .... The . chief.....defect.....insisted, upon, 

was the feebleness of the dénouement, and, generally, 


190 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


of the concluding scenes, as compared with the 
opening passages. We are not sure, however, that 
anything like detailed criticism has been attempted 
in the case—nor do we propose now to attempt it. 
Nevertheless, the work has interest, not only within 
itself,-but-.as-the-first-dramatic’effort-of-an. author 
who has remarkably “succeeded in” almostevery 
other department of light literature than that of 
the-drama. It may be as well, therefore, to speak 
of it, if not analytically, at least somewhat in detail; 
and we cannot, perhaps, more suitably commence 
than by a quotation, without comment, of some 
of the finer passages: 


And, though she is a virgin outwardly, 
Within she is a sinner; like those panels 

Of doors and altar-pieces the old monks 
Painted in convents, with the Virgin Mary 
On the outside, and on the inside Venus. ... 


I believe 
That woman, in her deepest degradation, 
Holds something sacred, something undefiled, 
Some pledge and keepsake of her higher nature, 
And, like the diamond in the dark, retains 
Some quenchless gleam of the celestial light. ... 


And we shall sit together unmolested, 
And words of true love pass from tongue to tongue, 
As singing birds from one bough to another... . 


Our feelings and our thoughts 
Tend ever on and rest not in the Present. 
As drops of rain fall into some dark well, 
And from below comes a scarce audible sound, 
So fall our thoughts into the dark Hereafter, 
And their mysterious echo reaches us. ... 


Her tender limbs are still, and, on her breast, 
The cross she prayed to, ere she fell asleep, 
Rises or falls with the soft tide of dreams, 
Like a light barge safe moored... .. 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS anp tHE DRAMA 1orx 


Hark! how the large and ponderous mace of Time 
Knocks at the golden portals of the day! ... 


The lady Violante, bathed in tears 

Of love and anger, like the maid of Colchis, 
Whom thou, another faithless Argonaut, 
Having won that golden fleece, a woman’s love 
Desertest for this Glaucé. .. . 


I read or sit in reverie and watch 
The changing color of the waves that break 
Upon the idle sea-shore of the mind. .. . 


I will forget her. Al! dear recollections 
Pressed in my heart, like flowers within a book, 
Shall be torn out and scattered to the winds. ... 


O yes! I see it now— 
Yet rather with my heart than with mine eyes, 
So faint itis. And all my thoughts sail thither, 
Freighted with prayers and hopes, and forward urged 
Against all stress of accident, as, in 
The Eastern Talt, against the wind and tide 
Great ships were drawn to the Magnetic Mountains, 


But there are brighter dreams than those of Fame, 
Which are the dreams of Love! Out of the heart 
Rises the bright ideal of these dreams, 

As from some woodland fount a spirit rises 

And sinks again into its silent deeps, 

Ere the enamored knight can touch her robe! 

’*Tis this ideal that the soul of Man, 

Like the enamored knight beside the fountain, 
Waits for upon the margin of Life’s stream; 
Waits to behold her rise from the dark waters, 
Clad in a mortal shape! Alas, how many 

Must wait in vain! The stream flows evermore, 
But from its silent deeps no spirit rises! 

Yet I, born under a propitious star, 

Have found the bright ideal of my dreams, 


192 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Yes; by the Darro’s side 
My childhood passed. I can remember still 
The river, and the mountains capped with snow; 
The villages where, yet a little child, 

‘ I told the traveller’s fortune in the street; 

The smuggler’s horse; the brigand and the shepherd; 
The march across the moor; the halt at noon; 
The red fire of the evening camp, that lighted 
The forest where we slept; and, farther back, 
As in a dream, or in some former life, 
Gardens and palace walls. ... 


This path will lead us to it, 
Over the wheat-fields, where the shadows sail 
Across the running sea, now green, now blue, 
And, like an idle mariner on the ocean, 
Whistles the quail. ... 


These extracts will be universally admired. They 
are graceful, well expressed, imaginative, and 
altogéther replete with the true poetic feeling. We 
quote them now, at the beginning of our review, by 
way of justice to the poet, and because, in what 
follows, we are not sure that we have more than a 
very few words of what may be termed commenda- 
tion to bestow. 

The ‘‘Spanish Student” has an unfortunate 
beginning, in a most unpardonable, and yet, to 
render the matter worse, in a most indispensable 
* Preface 


The subject of the following play, [says Mr. L..,} is taizen 
in part from the beautiful play of Cervantes, La Gitaniilc. 
To this source; however, Iam indebted for the main incident 
only, the love-of a Spanish student fora Gipsy. girl, and the 
name of the heroine, Preciosa. I have not followed the 
story in any of. its details. In Spain this subject has been 
twice handled dramatically; first by Juan Perer de Montal- 
van, in La Gitanilla, and afterwards by Antonio de Solis y 
Rivadeneira in La Gitanilla de Madrid. The same subject 
has also been made use of by Thomas Middleton, an English 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS anp tue DRAMA 103 


dramatist of the seventeenth century. His play is called 
The Spanish Gipsy. The main plot is the same as in the 
Spanish pieces; but there runs through it a tragic underplot 
of the loves of Rodrigo and Dofia Clara, which is taken 
from another tale of Cervantes, La Fuerza de la Sangre. 
The reader who is acquainted with La Gitanilla of Cer- 
vantes, and the plays of Montalvan, Solis, and Middleton, 
will perceive that my treatment of the subject differs 
entirely from theirs. 


Now the autorial originality, properly considered, 
is threefold. There is, first, the originality of the 
general thesis; secondly, that of the several incidents, 
or thoughts, by which the thesis is developed; and, 
thirdly, that of manner, or tone, by which means 
alone, an old subject, even when developed through 
hackneyed incidents, or thoughts, may be made 
to produce a fully original effect—which, after all, 
is the end truly in view. 

But originality, as it is one of the highest, is also 
_ one~of the rarest” of merits. In America it is espe- 
cially, and very remarkably rare:—this through 
causes sufficiently well understood. We are content 
»*per force, therefore, as a general thing, with either of 
the lower branches of originality mentioned above, 
and would regard with high favor, indeed, any 
author who should supply the great desideratum 
in combining the three. Still the three should be 
combined; and from whom, if not from such men as 
Professor Longfellow—if not from those who occupy 
the chief niches in our Literary Temple—shall we 
expect the combination? But in the present in- 
stance, what has Professor Longfellow accomplished? 
Is he original at any one point? Is he original in 
respect to the first and most important of our three 
divisions? ‘‘The subject of the following play,” 
he says himself, ‘‘is taken in part from the beautiful 
play of Cervantes, La Gitanilla.”’ ‘‘To this source, 

Vor. VI—13 


194 EDGAR ALLEN POE 


however, I am indebted for the main incident only, 
the love of the Spanish student for a Gipsy girl, and 
the name of the heroine, Preciosa.”’ 

_ The italics are our own, and the words italicized 
involve an obvious contradiction. Wecannot under- 
stand how “‘the love of the Spanish student for the 
Gipsy girl’’ can be called an ‘“‘incident,” or even a 
‘‘main incident,” at all. In fact, this love—this 
discordant and therefore eventful or incidentful 
love—is the true thests of the drama of Cervantes. 
It is this anomalous ‘‘love’’ which originates the 
incidents by means of which, itself, this ‘‘love,” 
the thesis, is developed. Having based his play, 
then, upon this “‘love,’”’ we cannot admit his claim 
to originality upon our first count; nor has he any 
right to say that. he has..adopted his ‘‘subject” 
“tn part.’ It is clear that he has adopted it alto- 
gether. Nor would he have been entitled to claim. 
originality of subject, even had he based his story 
upon any variety of love arising between parties 
naturally separated by prejudices of caste—such, for 
example, as those which divide the Brahmin from 
the Pariah, the Ammonite from the African, or even 
the Christian from the Jew. For here in its ultimate 
analysis, is the real thesis of the Spaniard. But 
when the drama is founded, not merely upon this 
general thesis, but upon this general thesis in the 
identical application given it by Cervantes—that 
is to say, upon the prejudice of caste exemplified ~ 
in the case of a Catholic, and this.Catholic.a Span-_ 
iard, and this Spaniard a student, and this student 
Joving a Gipsy, and this Gipsy a dancing-girl, and _ 
this dancing-girl bearing the name Preciosa—we are 
not altogether.prepared to be informed by Professor: 
Longfellow that. he is indebted for an ‘‘incident 
only” to the ‘‘beautiful Gitanilla of Cervantes.” 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS anp tuzE DRAMA 1095 


Whether our author is original upon our second 

and third points—in the true incidents of his story, 
or in the manner and tone of their handling—will 
be more distinctly seen as we proceed. - 
_ It is to be regretted that ‘‘The Spanish Student” 
was not sub-entitled ‘‘A Dramatic Poem,” rather 
than ‘“‘A’ Play.” The former title would Have more 
-fully’ conveyed the intention of the poet; for, of 
course, we shall not do Mr. Longfellow the injustice 
to suppose that his design has been, in any respect, 
a play, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. 
Whatever may be its merits in a merely poetical 
view, ““The Spanish Student”’ could not be endured 
upon the stage. 

Its*plot runs thus:—Preciosa, the daughter of a 
*Spanish gentleman, is stolen, while an infant, by 
Gipsies; brought up as his own daughter, and as a 
dancing-girl, by a Gipsy leader, Crusado; and by 
him betrothed to a young Gipsy, Bartolomé. 
At Madrid, Preciosa loves and is beloved by Victor- 
ian, a student of Alcalda, who resolves to marry 
her, notwithstanding her caste, rumors involving 
her purity, the dissuasions of his friends, and his 
betrothal to an heiress of Madrid. Preciosa is also 
sought by the Count of Lara, a roué. She rejects 
him. He forces his way into her chamber, and is 
there seen by Victorian, who, misinterpreting some 
words overheard, doubts the fidelity of his mistress, 
and leaves her in anger, after challenging the Count 
of Lara. In the duel, the Count receives his life 
at the hands of Victorian; declares his ignorance 
of the understanding between Victorian and Preciosa; 
boasts of favors received from the latter; and, to 
make good his words, produces a ring which she 
gave him, he asserts, as a pledge of her love. This 
ring is a duplicate of one previously given the girl by 


196 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Victorian, and known to have been so given, by 
the Count. Victorian mistakes it for his own, 
believes all that has been said, and abandons the 
field to his rival, who, immediately afterwards, 
while attempting to procure access to the Gipsy, 
is assassinated by Bartolomé. Meanwhile, Victor- 
ian, wandering through the country, reaches Gaudar- 
rama. Here he receives a letter from Madrid, 
disclosing the treachery practised by Lara, and 
telling that Preciosa, rejecting his addresses, had 
been, through his instrumentality hissed from the 
stage, and now again roamed with the Gipsies. 
He goes in search of her; finds her in a wood near 
Guadarrama; approaches her, disguising his voice; 
she recognises him, pretending she does not, and 
unaware that he knows her innocence; a conversation 
of equivoque ensues; he sees his ring upon her finger; 
offers to purchase it; she refuses to part with it; 
a full éclaircissement takes place; at this juncture, 
a servant of Victorian’s arrives with “‘news from 
court,” giving the first intimation of the true 
parentage of Preciosa. ‘The lovers set out, forth- 
with, for Madrid, to see the newly-discovered 
father. On the route, Bartolomé dogs their steps; 
fires at Preciosa; misses her; the shot is returned; 
he falls; and “‘The Spanish Student” is concluded. 
This plot, however, like that of ‘‘Tortesa,” looks 
better in our naked digest” than-amidstthe details 
which develop-.only~-to..disfigure it: The reader 
of the play itself will be astonished, when he remem- 


of the incidents—at the utter ‘want of iste art— 
manifested in theif conception and introduction. 
In dramatic writing, no principle ig more-clear than — 
that nothing should be said or done which has not 
a tendency~todévelop the catastrophe, or the 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS anp tuzE DRAMA 107 


_characters.~ But_Mr. Longfellow’s play abounds 
“in events and conversations that have no ostensible 
purpose, and certainly..answer no end. In what 
light, for example, since we cannot suppose this 
_drama intended for the stage, are we to regard the 
second scene of the second act, where a long dialogue 
between an Archbishop and a Cardinal is wound up 
by a dance from Preciosa? The Pope thinks of 
abolishing public dances in Spain, and the priests 
in question have been delegated to examine, person- 
ally, the proprieties or improprieties of such exhibi- 
tions. With this view, Preciosa is summoned and 
required to give a specimen of her skill. ae this, 


all that is oer is an occasion or an excuse 
for_a dance; but. what business has it-in a pure 
_drama? or in-what-regard does it further the end 
of a _-dramatic poem, intended only to be read? In 
the same manner, the whole of scene the eighth, 
in the same act, is occupied with six lines of stage 
directions, as follows: 


The Theatre. The orchestra plays the Cachuca. Sound of 
castanets behind the scenes. The curtain rises and dts- 
covers Preciosa in the attitude of commencing the dance. 
The Cachuca. Tumult. Hisses. Cries of Brava! and 
Aguera! She falters and pauses. The music stops. 
General confusion. Preciosa faints. 


But the inconsequence of which we complain will 
be best exemplified by an entire scene. We take 
scene the fourth, act the first: 


An inn on the road to Alcalé. BALTASAR asleep on a bench, 
Enter CHISPA. 

Chispa. And here we are, half way to Alcalé, between 
cocks and midnight. Body o’ me! what an inn this is! 
The light out and the landlord art Hold! ancient 
Baltasar! 


E98 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Baltasar [waking]. Here I am. 

Chispa. Yes, there you are, like a one-eyed alcade in a 
town without inhabitants. Bring a light, and let me have 
supper. 

Baltasar. Where is your master? 

Chispa. Do not trouble yourself about him. We have 
stopped a moment to breathe our horses; and if he chooses 
to walk up and down in the open air, looking into the sky 
as one who hears it rain, that does not satisfy my hunger, 
you know. But be quick, for I am in a hurry, and every 
one stretches his legs according to the length of his coverlet. 
What have we here? 

Baltasar [setting a light on the table]. Stewed rabbit. 

Chispa [eating]. Conscience of Portalegre! stewed kitten, 
you mean! 

Baltasar. Anda pitcher of Pedro Ximenes, with a 
roasted pear in it. 

Chispa [drinking]. Ancient Baltasar, amigo! You know 
how to cry wine and sell vinegar. I tell you this is nothing 
but vino tinto of La Mancha, with a tang of the swine-skin. 

Baltasar. I swear to you by Saint Simon and Judes 
it is all as I say. 

Chispa. And I swear to you by Saint Peter and Saint 
Paul, that it is no such thing. Moreover, your supper is 
like the hidalgo’s dinner—very little meat and a great deal 
of table-cloth. 

Baltasar. Ha! ha! ha! 

Chispa. And more noise than nuts. 

Baltasar. Ha!ha!ha! You must have your joke, 
Master Chispa. But shall I not ask Don Victorian in to 
take a draught of the Pedro Ximenes? 

Chispa. No; you might as well say, “Don’t you want 
some?’’ to a dead man. 

Baltasar. Why does he go so often to Madrid? 

Chispa. For the same reason that he eats no supper. 
He is in love. Were you ever in love, Baltasar? 

Baltasar. I was never out of it, good Chispa. It has 
been the torment of my life. 

Chispa. What! are you on fire, too, old hay-stack? 
Why, we shall never be able to put you out. 

Victorian [without]. Chispa! 


Chispa. Go to bed, Pero Grullo, for the cocks are crow-: 


ing, 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS anp tut DRAMA 199 


Victortan. Ea! Chispa! Chispa! 

Chispa. Ea! Senor. Come with me, ancient Baltasar, 
and bring water for the horses. I will pay for the supper 
to-morrow. [Exeunt.] 


Now here the question occurs—what is accom- 
plished? How has the subject been forwarded? 
We did not need’ to Jearn that Victorian was in love 
—that was known before; and all that we glean is 
that a-stupid imitation of sancho Panza drinks, 
ain the course of two minutes, (the time occupied 
in the perusal of the scene,).a bottle of vino tinto, 
by” way of Pedro Ximenes, and devours a ‘stewed 
kitten 1 in place..of.a rabbit. 

~In«the_beginning of the play this Chispa is the 
valet of Victorian; subsequently we find him the 
servant of another; and near the dénouement, he 
returns to his original master. No cause is assigned, 
and not éven the shadow of an object is attained; 
the whole tergiversation being but another instance 
of the Ha inconsequence which abounds in the 
play.—_——~ 
~The mathor’ S santos of skill is especially 
evinced in the scene of the éclaircissement between 
Victorian and Preciosa. The former having been 
enlightened respecting the true character of the latter 
by means of a letter received at Guadarrama, from 
a friend at Madrid, (how wofully inartistical is this!) 
resolves to go in search of her forthwith, and forth- 
with, also, discovers her in a wood close at hand. 
Whereupon he approaches, disguising his votce:—_. 
yes, we-are required. to..believe..that.a-lover may so 
disguise his voice from his mistress, as even to 
render-his person in full-view,-irrecognisable! He 
approaches, and each knowing the other, a conver- 
sation-ensues under the hypothesis that each to the 
other i is s unknown—a very unoriginal, and, of course, 


ences: 


200 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


a very silly source.of equivoque, fit only for the 
gum-elastic imagination of an infant. But what 
we especially complain of here, is that our poet 
should have taken so many and so obvious pains 
to bring about this position of equivoque, when it 
was impossible that it could have served any 
other purpose than that of injuring his intended 
effect! Read, for example this passage: 


Victorian. I never loved a maid; 

For she I loved was then a maid no more, 
Preciosa. How know you that? 
Victorian. A little bird in the air 

Whispered the secret. 
Preciosa. ‘There, take back your gold! 

Your hand is cold like a deceiver’s hand! 

There is no blessing in its charity! 

Make her your wife, for you have been abused; 

And you shall mend your fortunes mending hers. 
Victorian. How like an angel’s speaks the tongue of 

woman, 
_-When pleading in another’s cause her own! 


Now here it is clear that if we understood Preciosa 
to be really ignorant of Victorians identity, the 
“pleading in another’s cause her own,’ would 
create a favorable impression upon the reader, or 
spectator. But the advice—‘‘Make her your wife,” 
&c., takes an interested and selfish turn when we 
remember that she knows to whom she speaks. 


Again, when Victorian says, 
That is a pretty ring upon your finger, 
Pray give it me! 
And when she replies: 
No, never from my hand 
Shall that be taken, 
we are inclined to think her only an artful coquette, 
knowing, as we do, the extent of her knowledge; 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS anp toe DRAMA 201 


on the other hand, we should have applauded her 
constancy (as the author intended) had shé been 
represented ignorant of Victorian’s presence.\. The 
effect upon the audience, in a word,—would be 
pleasant in place of disagreeable were the case altered 
as we suggest, while the effect upon Victorian would 
remain altogether untouched. 

A still more remarkable instance of deficiency 
in the dramatic tact is to be found in the mode 
of bringing about the discovery of Preciosa’s par- 
entage. In the very moment of the éclaturcissement 
between the lovers, Chispa arrives almost as a 
matter of course, and settles the point in a sentence: 


Good news from Court; Good news! Beltran Cruzado 
The Count of the Calés is not your father, 

But your true father has returned to Spain 

Laden with wealth. You are no more a Gipsy. 


Now here are three points:—first,..the extreme 
baldness, platitude, and tnudependence of the incident 
narrated by Chispa--The opportune return of the 
father-(we are tempted to say the excessively oppor- 
tune) stands by itself—has no relation to any other 
“event in the play—does. not..appear to arise, in the 
Op se 
way of result, “from any.-incident.or incidents that 
_ have arisen before... _It_has the air of a happy chance; 
~_of.a God-send, of-an-ultra-accident, invented by the 
playwright. by way. ofcompromise for his lack of 
invention. Nec Deus tntersit, &c.—but here the god 
“has: interposed, and the knot is laughably unworthy 
of the god. 
~ The second point concerns the return of the 
father ‘‘laden with wealth.” The lover has aban- 
doned his mistress in her poverty, and, while 
yet the words of his proffered reconciliation hang 
upon his lips, comes his own servant with the 


Nene 


202 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


news that the mistress’ father has returned ‘ laden 
with wealth.’’ Now, so far.as.regards the audience, 
who are behind the scenes and know the fidelity 
of the lover—so far as regards the audience, all 
is right; but the poet had no business to place 
his heroine in the sad predicament of being forced, 
provided she is not a fool, to suspect both the ig- 
norance and the disinterestedness of the hero. 

The third point has reference to the words— 
‘You are now no more a Gipsy.” The—-thesis 
of this drama, as we have already said, is love 
disregarding. the-.prejudices...ofcaste,and-in_ the 
__ development of this thesis, the powérs of the drama- 
tist have been erigaged, or should have been engaged 
during the whole of the threé acts of the play. 
The interest excited lies in our admiration of the 
sacrifice, and of the love that could make it; but 
this interest immediately and. disagreeably. subsides 
when we find that..the sacrifice has been made 
tono purpose. ‘‘Youarenomorea Gipsy” dissolves 
the charm, and obliterates-the whole impression 
which the author has been at so much labor to 
convey. Our romantic sense of the hero’s chivalry 
declines into a complacent satisfaction with his fate. 
We drop our enthusiasm; with the enthusiast, 
and jovially shake by the hand the mere man of good 
luck. But is not the latter feeling the more com- 
fortable of the two? Perhapsso; but ‘‘comfortable”’ 
is not exactly the word Mr. Longfellow might wish 
applied to the end of his drama, and then why be 
at the trouble of building up an effect through a 
hundred and eighty pages, merely to knock it 
down at the end of the hundred and eighty-first? 

We have already given, at some length, our 
conceptions of the nature of plot—and of that of 
“The Spanish Student,” it seems almost super- 


— 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS anp tHE DRAMA 203 


fluous to speak at all.It-has_nothing of construc- 
tion _about.-it:Indeed there is. scarcely a single 


incident which has any necessary dependence upon 
any one other. Not only might we take away 


_two-thirds~of_the--whole without ruin—but_with- 
—out_ detriment—indeed with a positive benefit 


Sen 


to the mass.. And, even as regards the mere order 
of arrangement, we might with a very decided 
chance of improvement, put the scenes in a bag, 
give them a shake or two-by way of shuffle, and 
tumble them out... The whole mode of collocation— 
not to speak of the feebleness of the incidents in 
themselves—evinces,.on the part of the author, an 
utter and radical want of the adapting or constructive 
power which the drama so imperatively demands. 
Of the unoriginality of the thesis we have already 
spoken; and now, to the unoriginality of the events 
by which the thesis is developed, we need do little 
more than allude. \ What, indeed, could we say 
of such incidents asthe child stolen by gipsies—as 
her education as a damseuse—as her betrothal to a 
Gipsy—as her preference for a gentleman—as the 
rumors against her purity—as her persecution by 
a roué—as the inruption of the roué into her cham- 
ber—as the consequent misunderstanding between 
her and her lover—as the duel—as the defeat of the 
roué—as the receipt of his life from the hero—as his 
boasts of success with the girl—as the ruse of the du- 
plicate ring—as the field, in consequence, abandoned 
by the lover—as the assassination of Lara while 
scaling the girls’ bed-chamber—as the disconsolate 
peregrination of Victorian—as the equivoque scene 
with Preciosa—as the offering to purchase the ring 
and the refusal to part with it—as the ‘‘news from 
court” telling of the Gipsy’s true parentage—what 
could we say of all these ridiculous things, except that 


earner 


204 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


we have met them, each and all, some two or three 


—<hundred times before, and. that “they have-formed, 


_in..a.greater or less degree, the staple. material 
of every Hop-O’My-Thumb tragedy since the flood? 
There is not an incident, from the first page of 
‘‘The Spanish Student” to the last and most 
satisfactory, which we would not undertake to 
find boldly, at ten minutes’ notice, in some one of 
the thousand and one comedies of intrigue attrib- 
uted to Calderon and Lope de Vega. 

But if our poet is grossly unoriginal in his subject, 
and in the events which evolve it, may he not 
be original in his handling or tone? We really 
grieve to. say.-that~he~is-not,—-unless, indeed, we 
grant him the meed of originality for the peculiar 
manner in which he has jumbled together” the 
quaint and. stilted tone of the-old. English-drama- 
tists. with the dégagée-air-of.-Cervantes. But this — 
is a point upon which, through want of space, we 
must necessarily permit the reader to judge al- 
together for himself. We quote, however, a passage 
from the Second scene of the first act, by way of 
showing how very easy a matter it is to make a 
man discourse Sancho Panza: 


Chispa. Abernuncio Satanas! and a plague upon all 
lovers who ramble about at night, drinking the elements, 
instead of sleeping quietly in their beds. Every dead man 
to his cemetery, say I; and every friar to his monastery. 
Now, here’s my master Victorian, yesterday a cow-keeper 
and to-day a gentleman; yesterday a student and to-day 
a lover; and I must be up later than the nightingale, for 
as the abbot sings so must the sacristan respond. God 
grant he may soon be married, for then shall all this sere- 
nading cease. Ay, marry, marry, marry! Mother, what 
does marry mean? It means to spin, to bear children, and 
to weep, my daughter! And, of a truth, there is something 
more in matrimony than the wedding-ring. And now, 
gentlemen, Pax vobiscum! as the ass said to the cabbages! 


LONGFELLOW, WILLIS ann toze DRAMA 208 


And, we might add, as an ass only should say. 
‘In_ fact, throughout-““Phe~ Spanish Student, ” 
as well as throughout™ other compositions of its 
author, there runs a very obvious vein of zmitation. 
- We are perpetually remindéd™’of- something we 
have seen before—some old acquaintance in manner 
or matter; and even where the Similarity cannot 
-—~be-said-to.amount to plagiarism, is it still injurious 
to the poet in the good opinion, of him who reads. 
—~Among the minor defects of the play, we may 
mention the frequent allusion to book ‘incidents 
not generally known, and requiring. each. a note 
—by...way__ of “explanation. The drama demands 
that everything be so instantaneously evident 
that he who runs may read; and the only impression 
effected by these notes to a play is, that the author 
is desirous of showing his reading. 
We may mention, also, occasional tautologies— 
such as: ~ 


Never did I behold thee so attired 
_-And garmenied in beauty as s-to-night! 


Or" 
What we need 
Ts the celestial fire to change the fruit 
Into transparent crystal, bright and clear! 


We may speak, too, of more than occasional 
errors of grammar. For example, p. 23: 


Did no one see thee? None, nny) love, but thou, | 


— enne2a PRRRSA METI 


Here “‘but” is not a conjunction, but a prep- 
osition, and governs thee in the objective. ‘‘None 
but thee” would be right; meaning none except 
thee, saving thee. At page 2 275 “mayst ” is some- 
what_incorrectly — written “‘n “may st.” _At-page 34 
we have: 

I have no other saint than-thou-to-pray to. 


206 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Here authority. and analogy are both against 
Mr. Longfellow. ‘‘Than”..also is here a.prep- 
osition governing the objective, and meaning save, or 
except. “‘I have none other God than thee,” &c. See 
‘Horne Tooke. The Latin ‘‘quam te” is exactly 
equivalent. At page 8> we read: 


Like thee J am a captive, and Izke thee, 
I have a gentle gaoler. 


Here ‘‘like-thee”’ (although grammatical of 
course) does not convey the idea. Mr. L. does not 
mean that the speaker is lzke the bird itself but 
that his condition resembles it. The true read- 
ing would thus be: 


As thou I am a captive,and,-as thou 
I have.a gentle gaoler: 


That is to say, as thou art, and as thou hast. 
_ Upon the whole, we regret that—Professor Long- _ 
fellow has written this work,..and_ feel _especially 
vexed-that he has committed himself by. its.republi- 
cation. Only when regarded as a mere poem, 
can-it- be said to have merit of any kind. For, 
in fact, it is only when we separate the poem-from 
“the drama, that the passages we have commended 
as beautiful can be understood to have beauty. 
We are not too sure, indeed, that-a=“‘dramatic 
poem-”is not a flat~coritradiction in-terms. At all 
events a man of true genius, (and such Mr. L. 
unquestionably is,) has no business with these hybrid 
and paradoxical compositions. Let-a-poem be a 
poem-only; let a play be a play and nothing more. 


“As for ‘‘The” Spanish Student,” its thesis is un- 


original; its incidents are antique; its plot is no plot; 
its characters have no character: in short, it is little 
better than a play upon words, to style it ‘‘A Play” 
atall. ‘y- 


oe 


LONGFELLOW’S BALLADS 207 


LONGFELLOW’S BALLADS* 


publique, toute convention recue, est une soitise, 

car elle a convenue au plus grand nombre.” — 
One would be safe in wagering that any given public 
idea is erroneous, for it has been yielded to the clamor 
of the majority ;—and this strictly philosophical al- 
though somewhat French assertion, has especial bear- 
ing upon the whole race of what are termed maxims 
and popular proverbs; nine-tenths of which are the 
quintessence of folly. One of the most deplorably 
false of them is the antique adage, De gustibus non 
est disputandum—there should be no disputing about 
taste. Here the idea designed to be conveyed is that 
any one person has as just right to consider his own 
taste the true, as has any one other—that taste itself, 
in short, is an arbitrary something, amenable to no 
law, and measurable by no definite rules. It must be 
confessed, however, that the exceedingly vague and 
impotent treatises which are alone extant, have 
much to answer for as regards confirming the general 
,error. Not the least important service which, 
‘hereafter, mankind will owe to Phrenology, may, 
perhaps, be recognised in an analysis of the real 
principles, and a digest of the resulting laws of taste. 
These principles, in fact, are as clearly traceable, and 
these laws as readily susceptible of system as are any 
whatever. 


bi i] LY A PARIER,”’ says Chamfort, ‘‘que toute idée 


* Ballads and other Poems. By Henry Wadsworth Long- 
fellow, Author of ‘Voices of the Night,” “Hyperion,” etc} 
Second Edition. John Owen: Cambridge. 


208 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


In the meantime, the insane adage above mentioned 
is in no respect more generally, more stupidly, and 
more pertinaciously quoted than by the admirers of 
what is termed the ‘‘good old Pope,”’ or the “‘good 
old Goldsmith school”’ of poetry, in reference to the 
bolder, more natural, and more ideal compositions of 
such authors as Coétlogon and Lamartine* in France; 
Herder, Korner, and Uhland in Germany; Brun 
and Baggesen in Denmark; Bellman, Tegnér, and 
Nybergt in Sweden; Keats, Shelly, Coleridge, and 
Tennyson in England; Lowell and Longfellow in 
America. ‘‘De gustibus non,” say these ‘*good-old- 
school’’ fellows; and we have no doubt that their 
mental translation of the phrase is—'‘We pity your 
taste—we pity everybody’s taste but our own.” 

It is our purpose to controvert the popular idea 
that the poets just mentioned owe to novelty, to trick- 
eries of expression, and to other meretricious effects, 
their appreciation by certain readers:—to demonstrate _ 
(for the matter is susceptible of demonstration) that 
such poetry and such alone has fulfilled the legitimate 
office of the muse; has thoroughly satisfied an earnest 
and unquenchable desire existing in the heart of man. 

This volume of Ballads and Tales includes, with 
several brief original pieces, a translation from 
the Swedish of Tegnér. In attempting (what never 
should be attempted) a literal version of both the 
words and the metre of this poem, Professor Long- 
fellow has failed to do justice either to his author 
or himself. He has striven to do what no man 
ever did well, and what, from the nature of lan- 
guage itself, never can be well done. Unless, for 
example, we shall come to have an influx of spondees 


* We allude here chiefly to ithe “David” of Coétlogon, and 
only to the ‘“‘Chitte d’un Ange’’ of Lamartine. 
tT C. Julia Nyberg, aoe of the “ Dikter von Euphrosyne.”' 


LONGFELLOW’S BALLADS 209 


in our English tongue, it will always be impossible 
to construct an English hexameter. Our spondees, 
or, we should say, our spondaic words, are rare. 
In the Swedish they are nearly as abundant as in 
the Latin and Greek. We have only ‘‘compound,”’ 
“context,” “‘footfall,’’ and a few other similar ones. 
This is the difficulty; and that it zs so will become 
evident upon reading “‘The Children of the Lord’s 
Supper,” where the sole readable verses are those 
in which we meet with the rare spondaic dissyllables. 
We mean to say readable as hexameters; for many 
of them will read very well as mere English dactylics 
with certain irregularities. 

Much as we admire the genius of Mr. Longfellow, 
we are fully sensible of his many errors of affec- 
tation and imitation. His artistical skill is great, 
and his ideality high. But his conception of the 
aims of poesy ts all wrong; and this we shall prove 
at some future day—to our own satisfaction, at 
least. His didactics are all out of place. He has 
written brilliant poems—by accident; that is to 
say when permitting his genius to get the better 
of his conventional habit of thinking—a habit 
deduced from German study. We do not mean to 
say that a didactic moral may not be well made the 
under-current of a poetical thesis; but that it can 
never be well put so obtrusively forth, as in the 
majority of his compositions. .... 

We have said that Mr. Longfellow’s conception 
of the aims of poesy is erroneous; and that thus, 
laboring at a disadvantage, he does violent wrong to 
his own high powers; and now the question is, what 
are his ideas of the aims of the Muse, as we gather 
these ideas from the general tendency of his poems? 
It will be at once evident that, imbued with the 
peculiar spirit of German song (in pure convention- 

Vou. VI—14 


210 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


ality) he regards the inculcation of a moral as essen- 
tial. Here we find it necessary to repeat that we 
have reference only to the general tendency of his 
compositions; for there are some magnificent excep- 
tions, where, as if by accident, he has permitted his 
genius to get the better of his conventional prejudice. 
But didacticism is the prevalent tone of his song. His 
invention, his imagery, his all, is made subservient to 
the elucidation of some one or more points (but rarely 
of more than one) which he looks upon astruth. And 
that this mode of procedure will find stern defenders 
should never excite surprise, so long as the world is 
full to overflowing with cant and conventicles. 
There are men who will scramble on all fours through 
the muddiest sloughs of vice to pick up a single apple 
of virtue. There are things called men who, so long 
as the sun rolls, will greet with snuffling huzzas 
every figure that takes upon itself the semblance of 
truth, even although the figure, in itself only a 
“‘stuffed Paddy,’’ be as much out of place as a toga 
on the statue of Washington, or out of season as 
rabbits in the days of the dog-star...... 

We say this with little fear of contradiction. Yet 
the spirit of our assertion must be more heeded than 
the letter. Mankind have seemed to define Poesy in 
a thousand, and in a thousand conflicting definitions. 
But the war is one only of words. Induction is as 
well applicable to this subject as to the most palpa- 
ble utilitarian ; and by its sober processes we find that, 
in respect to compositions which have been really re- 
ceived as poems, the imaginative, or, more popularly, 
the creative portions alone have ensured them to be 
so received. Yet these works, on account of these 
portions, having once been so received and so named, 
it has happened, naturally and inevitably, that other 
portions totally unpoetic have not only come to be re- 


LONGFELLOW’S BALLADS art 


garded by the popular voice as poetic, but have been 
made to serve as false standards of perfection, in the 
adjustment of other poetical claims. Whatever has 
been found in whatever has been received as a poem 
has been blindly regarded as ex stat# poetic. And 
this 1s a species of gross error which scarcely could 
have made its way into any less intangible topic. In 
fact that license which appertains to the Muse herself, 
it has been thought decorous, if not sagacious to in- 
dulge, in all examination of her character. .... 
Poesy is a response—unsatisfactory it is true—but 
still in some measure a response, to a natural and 
irrepressible demand. Man being what he is, the time 
could never have been in which Poesy was not. Its 
first element is the thirst for supernal BEAuty—a 
beauty which is not afforded the soul by any existing 
collocation of earth’s forms—a beauty which, per- 
haps, no possible combination of these forms would 
fully produce. Its second element is the attempt to 
satisfy this thirst by novel combinations among those 
forms of beauty which already exist—or by novel 
combinations of those combinations which our prede- 
cessors, toiling in chase of the same phantom, have 
already set in order. We thus clearly deduce the 
novelty, the originality, the tnvention, the 1magination, 
or lastly the creation of BEAUTY, (for the terms as 
here employed are synonymous,) as the essence of all 
Poesy. Nor is this idea so much at variance with 
ordinary opinion as, at first sight, it may appear. A 
multitude of antique dogmas on this topic will be 
found, when divested of extrinsic speculation, to be 
easily resoluble into the definition now proposed. We 
donothing more than present tangibly the vague 
clouds of the world’s idea. We recognise the idea 
itself floating, unsettled, indefinite, in every attempt 
which has yet been made to circumscribe the concep- 


512 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


tion of ‘‘Poesy” inwords. A striking instance of this 
is observable the fact that no definition exists, in 
which either ‘‘the beautiful,’’ or some one of those 
_qualities which we have above designated synony- 
mously with “‘creation,”’ has not been pointed out as 
the chief attribute of the Muse. ‘‘Invention,” how- — 
ever, or ‘‘imagination,”’ is by far more commonly in- 
sisted upon. The word romos itself (creation) speaks 
volumes upon this point. Neither will it be amiss 
here to mention Count Bielfeld’s definition of poetry 
as “‘L’art dexprimer les pensées par la fiction.” 
With this definition (of which the philosophy is 
profound to acertain extent) the German terms Dich- 
thunst, the art of fiction, and Dzchten, to feign, which 
are used for ‘‘poetry” and ‘‘to make verses,’’ are in 
full and remarkable accordance. It is, nevertheless, 
in the combination of the two omni-prevalent ideas 
that the novelty, and, we believe, the force of our 
own proposition is to be found..... 

The elements of that beauty which is felt in sound, 
may be the mutual or common heritage of Earth and 
Heaven. Contenting ourselves with firm conviction, 
that music (in its modifications of rhythm and 
thyme) is of so vast a moment to Poesy, as never to 
be neglected by him who is truly poetical—is of so 
mighty a force in furthering the great aim intended, 
that he is mad who rejects its assistance—content 
with this idea we shall not pause to maintain its ab- 
solute essentiality, for the mere sake of rounding a 
definition. That our definition of poetry will neces- 
sarily exclude much of what, through a supine tolera- 
tion, has been hitherto ranked as poetical, is a mat- 
ter which affords us not even momentary concern. 
We address but the thoughtful, and heed only their 
approval—with our own. If our suggestions are 
truthful, then “‘after many days” shall they be 


LONGFELLOW’S BALLADS 213 


understood as truth, even though found in contra- 
diction of all that has been hitherto so understood. 
If false, shall we not be the first to bid them die? 

We would reject, of course, all such matters as 
“Armstrong on Health,” a revolting production; 
Pope’s ‘‘Essay on Man,” which may well be content 
with the title of an “‘Essay in Rhyme;” ‘‘ Hudibras’”’ 
and other merely humorous pieces. We do not 
gainsay the peculiar merits of either of these latter 
compositions—but deny them the position held. 
In the notice of Brainard’s Poems, we took occasion 
to show that the common use of a certain instrument. 
(rhythm,) had tended, more than aught else, to con- 
found humorous verse with poetry. The obser- 
vation is now recalled to corroborate what we have 
just said in respect to the vast effect or force of mel- 
ody in itself—an effect which could elevate into even 
momentary confusion with the highest efforts of 
mind, compositions such as are the greater number 
of satires or burlesques. .... 

We have shown our ground of objection to the 
general themes of Professor Longfellow. In common 
with all who claim the sacred title of poet, he should 
limit his endeavors to the creation of novel moods of 
beauty, in form, in color, in sound, in sentiment; for 
over all this wide range has the poetry of words 
dominion. To what the world terms prose may 
be safely and properly left all else. The artist who 
doubts of his thesis, may always resolve his doubt by 
the single question—‘‘ might not this matter be as 
well or better handled in prose?” If it may, then is 
it no subject for the Muse. In the general accepta- 
tion of the term Beauty we are content to rest; being 
careful only to suggest that, in our peculiar views, it 
must be understood as inclusive of the sublime. 

Of the pieces which constitute the present volume, 


214 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


there are not more than one or two thoroughly ful- 
filling the ideas we have proposed; although the vol- 
ume, as a whole, is by no means so chargeable with 
_didacticism as Mr. Longfellow’s previous book. 
We would mention as poems nearly true, ‘‘The Village 
Blacksmith’’; ‘‘*The Wreck of the Hesperus,’ and 
especially “‘The Skeleton in Armor.” In the first- 
mentioned we have the beauty of simple-mindedness 
as a genuine thesis; and this thesis is inimitably 
handled until the concluding stanza, where the 
spirit of legitimate poesy is aggrieved in the pointed 
antithetical deduction of a moral from what has gone 
before. In ‘‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’”’ we have 
the beauty of child-like confidence and innocence, 
with that of the father’s stern courage and affection. 
But, with slight exception, those particulars of the 
storm here detailed are not poetic subjects. Their 
thrilling horror belongs to prose, in which it could be 
far more effectively discussed, as Professor Longfellow 
may assure himself at any moment by experiment. 
There are points of a tempest which afford the loftiest 
and truest poetical themes—points in which pure 
beauty is found, or, better still, beauty heightened 
into the sublime, by terror. But when we read, 
among other similar things, that 


The salt sea was frozen on her breast, 
The salt tears in her eyes, 


we feel, if not positive disgust, at least a chilling 
sense of the inappropriate. In the ‘‘Skeleton in 
Armor” we find a pure and perfect thesis artistically 
treated. We find the beauty of bold courage and 
self-confidence, of love and maiden devotion, of 
reckless adventure, and finally of life-contemning 
grief. Combined with all this, we have numerous 
points of beauty apparently insulated, but all aiding 


LONGFELLOW’S BALLADS 215 


the main effect or impression. The heart is stirred, 
and the mind does not lament its mal-instruction. 
The metre is simple, sonorous, well-balanced, and 
fully adapted to the subject. Upon the whole, 
there are few truer poems than this. It has but 
one defect—an important one. The prose remarks 
prefacing the narrative are really necessary. But 
every work of art should contain within itself all 
that is requisite for its own comprehension. And 
this remark is especially true of the ballad. In 
poems of magnitude the mind of the reader is 
not, at all times, enabled to include, in one com- 
prehensive survey, the proportions and proper 
adjustment of the whole. He is pleased, if at all, 
with particular passages; and the sum of his pleasure 
is compounded of the sums of the pleasurable senti- 
ments inspired by these individual passages in the 
progress of perusal. But, in pieces of less extent, 
the pleasure is unique, in the proper acceptation of 
this term—the understanding is employed, without 
difficulty, in the contemplation of the picture as a 
whole; and thus its effect will depend, in great meas- 
ure, upon the perfection of its finish, upon the nice 
adaptation of its constituent parts, and especially, 
upon what is rightly termed by Schlegel the unity 
or totality of interest. But the practice of prefixing 
explanatory passages is utterly at variance with such 
unity. By the prefix, we are either put in possession 
of the subject of the poem, or some hint, historic 
fact, or suggestion, is thereby afforded, not included 
in the body of the piece, which, without the hint, 1s 
incomprehensible. In the latter case, while perus- 
ing the poem, the reader must revert, in mind at 
least, to the prefix, for the necessary explanation. 
In the former, the poem being a mere paraphrase of 
the prefix, the interest is divided between the prefix 


216 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


and the paraphrase. In either instance the totality 
of effect is destroyed. 

Of the other original poems in the volume before us, 
there is none in which the aim of instruction, or 
truth, has not been too obviously substituted for the 
legitimate aim, beauty. We have heretofore taken 
occasion to say that a didactic moral might be 
happily made the under-current of a poetical theme, 
and we have treated this point at length, in a re- 
view of Moore’s “‘Alciphron’’; but the moral thus 
conveyed is invariably an ill effect when obtruding 
beyond the upper current of the thesis itself. Per- 
haps the worst specimen of this obtrusion is given us 
by our poet in ‘‘Biind Bartimeus”’ and the ‘‘Goblet 
of Life,’’ where, it will be observed that the sole in- 
terest of the upper-current of meanng depends upon 
its relation or reference to the under. What we 
read upon the surface would be vox et preterea nihil 
in default of the moral beneath. The Greek finales 
of ‘‘Blind Bartimeus”’ are an affectation altogether 
inexcusable. What the small, second-hand, Gib- 
bon-ish pedantry of Byron introduced, is unworthy 
the imitation of Longfellow. 

Of the translations we scarcely think it necessary 
to speak at all. We regret that our poet will persist 
in busying himself about such matters. Hzs time 
might be better employed in original conception. 
Most of these versions are marked with the error 
upon which we have commented. This error is in 
fact, essentially Germanic. ‘‘The Luck of Eden- 
hall,’”’ however, is a truly beautiful poem; and we 
say this with all that deference which the opinion 
of the ‘‘Democratic Review”? demands. This com- 
position appears to us one of the very finest. It has 
all the free, hearty, obvious movement of the true 
ballad-legend. The greatest force of language is 


LONGFELLOW’S BALLADS a17 


combined in it with the richest imagination, acting 
in its most legitimate province. Upon the whole, 
we prefer it even to the “‘Sword-Song”’ of Korner. 
The pointed moral with which it terminates is so 
exceedingly natural—so perfectly fluent from the in- 
cidents—that we have hardly heart to pronounce 
it in ill taste. We may observeof this ballad, in con- 
clusion, that its subject is more physical than is 
usual in Germany. Its images are rich rather in 
physical than in moral beauty. And this tendency, 
in Song, is the true one. It is chiefly, if we are not 
mistaken—it is chiefly amid forms of physical loveli- 
ness (we use the word forms in its widest sense as 
embracing modifications of sound and color) that 
the soul seeks the realization of its dreams of BEAUTY. 
It is to her demand in this sense especially, that the 
poet, who is wise, will most frequently and most 
earnestly respond. 

‘‘The Children of the Lord’s Supper”’ is, beyond 
doubt, a true and most beautiful poem in great part, 
while, in some particulars, it is too metaphysical to 
have any pretension to thename. We have already 
objected, briefly, to its metre—the ordinary Latin or 
Greek Hexameter—dactyls and spondees at random, 
with a spondee in conclusion. We maintain that 
the hexameter can never be introduced into our 
language, from the nature of that language itself. 
This rhythm demands, for English ears, a preponder- 
ance of natural spondees. Our tongue has few. 
Not only does the Latin and Greek, with the Swedish, 
and some others, abound in them; but the Greek 
and Roman ear had become reconciled (why or how 
is unknown) to the reception of artificial spondees— 
that is to say, spondaic words formed partly of 
one word and partly of another, or from an excised 
mart of one word. In short, the ancients were con- 


218 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


tent to read as they scanned, or nearly so. It may be 
safely prophesied that we shall never do this; and 
thus we shall never admit English hexameters. The 
attempt to introduce them, after the repeated failures 
of Sir Philip Sidney, and others, is, perhaps, some- 
what discreditable to the scholarship of Professor 
Longfellow. The ‘“‘Democratic Review,” insaying 
that he has triumphed over difficulties in this 
rhythm, has been deceived, it is evident, by the 
facility with which some of these verses may be read. 
In glancing over the poem, we do not observe a 
single verse which can be read, to English Ears, as a 
Greek hexameter. There are many, however, which 
can be well read as mere English dactylic verses; 
such, for example, as the well known lines of Byron, 
commencing 


Know ye the | land where the | cypress and | myrtle. 


These lines (although full of irregularities) are, in 
their perfection, formed of three dactyls and a 
czesura—just as if we should cut short the initial 
verse of the Bucolics thus— 


Tityre | tu patu | le recu | bans— 


) 


The ‘‘myrtle,”’ at the close of Byron’s line, is a 
double rhyme, and must be understood as one syl- 
lable. 

Now a great number of Professor Longfellow’s 
hexameters are merely these dactylic lines, continued 
for two feet. For example— 


Whispered the | race of the | flowers and | merry on | 
balancing | branches. 


In this example, also, ‘‘branches,’’ which is a 
double ending, must be regarded as the cesura, or 
one syllable, of which alone it has the force. 


LONGFELLOW’S BALLADS 219 


As we have already alluded, in one or two regards, 
to a notice of these poems which appeared in the 
‘Democratic Review,” we may as well here proceed 
with some few further comments upon the article 
in question—with whose general tenor we are happy 
to agree. 

The Review speaks of ‘‘Maidenhood” as a poem, 
“not to be understood but as the expense of more 
time and trouble than a song can justly claim.” 
We are scarcely less surprised at this opinion from 
Mr. Langtree than we were at the condemnation of 
“The Luck of Edenhall.’’ 

‘“‘Maidenhood”’ is faulty, it appears to us, only on 
the score of its theme, which is somewhat didactic. 
Its meaning seems simplicity itself. A maden on 
the verge of womanhood, hesitating to enjoy life 
(for which she has a strong appetite) through a 
false idea of duty, is bidden to fear nothing, having 
purity of heart as her lion of Una. 

What Mr. Langtree styles ‘‘an unfortunate pecu- 
larity”? in Mr. Longfellow, resulting from ‘‘adher- 
ence to a false system”’ has really been always re- 
garded by us as one of his idiosyncratic merits. 
“In each poem,’’ says the critic, ‘he has but one 
idea, which, in the progress of his song, is gradually 
unfolded, and at last reaches its full development in 
the concluding lines; this singleness of thought might 
lead a harsh critic to suspect intellectual barrenness.”’ 
It leads us, individually, only to a full sense of the 
artistical power and knowledge of the poet. We 
confess that now, for the first time, we hear unity of 
conception objected to as a defect. But Mr. Lang- 
tree seems to have fallen into the singular error of 
supposing the poet to have absolutely but one 1dea in 
each of his ballads. Yet how ‘“‘one idea” can be 
‘gradually unfolded” without other ideas, is, to us, a 


220 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


mystery of mysteries. Mr. Longfellow, very prop- 
erly, has but one leading idea which forms the basis 
of his poem; but to the aid and development of this 
‘one there are innumerable others, of which the rare 
excellence is, that all are in keeping, that none could 
be well omitted, that each tends to the one general 
effect. It is unnecessary to say another word upon 
this topic. 

In speaking of ‘‘Excelsior,” Mr. Langtree (are we 
wrong in attributing the notice to his very forcible 
pen?) seems to labor under some similar misconcep- 
tion. ‘“‘It carries along with it,’’ says he, “‘a false 
moral which greatly diminishes its merit in our eyes. 
The great merit of a picture, whether made with 
the pencil or pen, 1s its truth; and this merit does nct 
belong to Mr. Longfellow’s sketch. Men of genius 
may, and probably do, meet with greater difficulties 
in their struggles with the world than their fellow- 
men who are less highly gifted; but their power of 
overcoming obstacles is proportionably greater, and 
the result of their laborious suffering is not death 
but immortality.” 

That the chief merit of a picture is its truth, is an 
assertion deplorably erroneous. Even in Painting, 
which is, more essentially than Poetry, a mimetic art, 
the proposition cannot be sustained. Truth is not 
even the aim. Indeed it is curious to observe how 
very slight a degree of truth is sufficient to satisfy 
the mind, which acquiesces in the absence of num- 
erous essentials in the thing depicted. An outline 
frequently stirs the spirit more pleasantly than the 
most elaborate picture. We need only refer to the 
compositions of Flaxman and of Retzch. Hereall 
details are omitted—nothing can be farther from 
truth. Without even color the most thrilling effects 
are produced. In statues we are rather pleased than 


LONGFELLOW’S BALLADS 23t 


disgusted with the want of the eyeball. The hair of 
the Venus de Medicis was gilded. Truth indeed! 
The grapes of Zeuxis as well as the curtain of Parr- 
hasius were received as indisputable evidence of the 
truthful ability of these artists—but they were not 
even classed among their pictures. If truth is the 
highest aim of either Painting or Poesy, then Jan 
Steen was a greater artist than Angelo, and Crabbe 
is a more noble poet than Milton. 

But we have not quoted the observations of Mr. 
Langtree to deny its philosophy; our design was 
simply to show that he has misunderstood the poet. 
‘Excelsior’ has not even a remote tendency to the 
interpretation assigned it by the critic. It depicts 
the earnest upward impulse of the soul—an impulse 
not to be dubdued evenin Death. Despising danger, 
resisting pleasure, the youth, bearing the banner 
inscribed ‘‘Excelstor!’ (higher still!) struggles 
through all difficulties to an Alpine summit. Warned 
to be content with the elevation attained, his cry is 
still ‘‘Excelstor!’’ and, even in falling dead on the 
highest pinnacle, his cry is still ‘‘Excelsior!’’ There 
is yet an immortal height to be surmounted—an as- 
cent in Eternity. The poet holds in view the idea of 
never-ending progress. That he is misunderstood 
is rather the misfortune of Mr. Langtree than the 
fault of Mr. Longfellow. There is an old adage about 
the difficulty of one’s furnishing an auditor both 
with matter to be comprehended aoe brains foi its 
comprehension, 


222 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


FANCY AND IMAGINATION 


DRAKE’S CULPRIT FAY AND MOORE’S 
ALCIPHRON* 


MID the vague mythology of Egypt, the 
voluptuous scenery of her Nile, and the 
gigantic mysteries of her pyramids, Anac- 

reon Moore has found all of that striking materiel 
which he so much delights in working up, and which 
he has embodied in the poem before us. ‘The design 
of the story (for plot it has none) has been a less 
consideration than its facilities, and is made subser- 
vient to its execution. The subject is comprised in 
five epistles. In the first, Alciphron, the head of 
the Epicurean sect at Athens, writes, from Alexan- . 
dria, to his friend Cleon, in the former city. He tells 
him (assigning a reason for quitting Athens and her 
pleasures) that, having fallen asleep one night 
after protracted festivity, he beholds, in a dream, a 
spectre, who tells him that, beside the sacred Nile, 
he, the Epicurean, shall find that Eternal Life for 
which he had so long been sighing. In the second, 
from the same to the same, the traveller speaks, at 
large and in the rapturous terms, of the scenery 
of Egyrt: of the beauty of her maidens; of an ap- 
preachiug Festival of the Moon; and of a wild hope 
enteitained that amid the subterranean chambers 
of some huge pyramid lies the secret which he covets, 
the secret of Life Eternal. In the third letter, he 
relates a love adventure at the Festival. Fascinated 
by the charms of one of the nymphs of a procession, 








* Alciphron, a Poem. By Thomas Moore, Esq., author ot 
Lalla Rookh, etc., etc. Carey and Hart, Philadelphia. 


FANCY AND IMAGINATION 222 


he is first in despair at losing sight of her, then over- 
joyed at again seeing her in Necropolis, and finally 
traces her steps until they are lost near one of the 
smaller pyramids. In epistle the fourth, (still from 
the same to the same,) he enters and explores the 
pyramid, and, passing through a complete series of 
Eleusinian mysteries, is at length successfully initi- 
ated into the secrets of Memphian priestcraft; we 
learning this latter point from letter the fifth, which 
concludes the poem, and is addressed by Orcus, high 
priest to Memphis, to Decius, a preetorian prefect. 
A new poem from Moore calls to mind that critical 
Opinion respecting him which had its origin, we be- 
lieve, in the dogmatism of Coleridge—we mean the 
opinion that he is essentially the poet of fancy—the 
term being employed in contradistinction to smagina- 
tion. “‘The Fancy,’’ says the author of the ‘‘An- 
cient Mariner,” in his Brographia Literaria, “‘the 
fancy combines, the imagination creates.” And 
this was intended, and has been received, as a dis- 
tinction. If so at all, it is one without a difference; 
without even a difference of degree. The fancy as 
neatly creates as the imagination; and neither 
creates in any respect. All novel conceptions are 
nearly unusual combinations. The mind of man 
can imagine nothing which has not really existed; 
and this point is susceptible of the most positive 
demonstration—see the Baron de Bielfeld, in his 
Premiers Traits de L’Erudition Unitverselle, 1767. 
It will be said, perhaps, that we can imagine a griffin, 
and that a griffin does not exist. Not the griffin 
certainly, but its component parts. It is amere com- 
pendium of known limbs and features—of known 
qualities. Thus with all which seems to be new— 
which appears to be a creation of intellect. It is 
re-soluble into the old. The wildest and most vigor- 


224 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


ous effort of mind cannot stand the test of this 
analysis. 

We might make a distinction, of degree, between 
the fancy and the imagination, in saying that the 
latter is the former loftily employed. But experience 
proves this distinction to be unsatisfactory. What 
we feel and know to be fancy, will be found still only 
fanciful, whatever be the theme which engages it. 
It retains its idiosyncrasy under all circumstances. 
No subject exalts it into the ideal. We might exem- 
plify this by reference to the writings of one whom 
our patroitism, rather than our judgment, has ele- 
vated to a niche in the Poetic Temple which he does 
not becomingly fill, and which he cannot long un- 
interruptedly hold. We allude to the late Dr. Rod- 
man Drake, whose puerile abortion, ‘‘The Culprit 
Fay,’’ we examined, at some length, in a critique 
elsewhere; proving it, we think, beyond all question, 
to belong to that class of the pseudo-ideal, in dealing 
with which we find ourselves embarrassed between 
a kind of half-consciousness that we ought to admire, 
and the certainty that we do not. Dr. Drake was 
employed upon a good subject—at least it is a sub- 
ject precisely identical with those which Shakspeare 
was wont so happily to treat, and in which, espe- 
cially, the author of “‘Lilian” has so wonderfully 
succeeded. But the American has brought to his 
task a mere fancy, and has grossly failed in doing what 
many suppose him to have done—in writing an 
ideal or imaginative poem. ‘There is not one par- 
ticle of the true moms about ‘‘The Culprit Fay.” 
We say that the subject, even at its best points, did 
not aid Dr. Drake in the slightest degree. He was 
never more than fanciful. ‘The passage, for example, 
chiefly cited by his admirers, is the account of the 
““Sylphid Queen’; and to show the difference be- 


FANCY AND IMAGINATION 225 


tween the false and true ideal, we collated, in the 
review just alluded to, this, the most admired 
passage, with one upon a similar topic by Shelley. 
We shall be pardoned for repeating here, as nearly as 
- we remember them, some words of what we then said. 
The description of the Sylphid Queen runs thus: 


But oh, how fair the shape that lay | 
Beneath a rainbow bending bright; 
She seemed to the entranced Fay, 
The loveliest of the forms of light; 
Her mantle was the purple rolled 
At twilight in the west afar; 
’Twas tied with threads of dawning gold, 
And buttoned with a sparkling star. 
Her face was like the lily roon 
That veils the vestal planet’s hue; 
Her eyes two beamlets from the mcon 
Set floating in the welkin blue. 
Her hair is like the sunny beam, 
And the diamond gems which round it gleam 
Are the pure drops of dewy even 
That ne’er have left their native heaven. 


In the Queen Mab of Shelley, a Fairy is thus in- 
troduced: 


Those who had looked upon the sight, 
Passing all human glory, 

Saw not the yellow moon, 

Saw not the mortal scene, 

Heard not the night-wind’s rush, 

Heard not an earthly sound, 

saw but the fairy pageant, 

Heard but the heavenly strains 

That filled the lonely dwelling— 


And thus described— 


The Fairy’s frame was slight; yon fibrous cloud 

That catches but the palest tinge of even, 

And which the straining eye can hardly seize 

When melting into eastern twilight’s shadow, 
Vor, VI—15 


226 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Were scarce so thin, so slight; but the fair star 
That gems the glittering coronet of morn, 
Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful, 
As that which, bursting from the Fairy’s form, 
Spread a purpureal halo round the scene, 

Yet with an undulating motion, 

Swayed to her outline gracefully, 


In these exquisite lines the faculty of mere com. 
parison is but little exercised—that of ideality in a 
wonderful degree. It is probable that in a similar 
case Dr. Drake would have formed the face of the 
fairy of the “‘fibrous cloud,” her arms of the “‘pale 
tinge of even,” her eyes of the “‘tair stars,”’ and her 
body of the ‘‘twilight shadow.”’ Having so done, 
his admirers would have congratulated him upon 
his zmagination, not taking the trouble to think that 
they themselves could at any moment imagine a 
fairy of materials equally as good, and conveying 
an equally distinct idea. Their mistake would be 
precisely analogous to that of many a schoolboy 
who admires the imagination displayed in Jack the 
Giant-Killer, and is finally rejoiced at discovering 
his own imagination to surpass that of the author, 
since the monsters destroyed by Jack are only about 
forty feet in height, and he himself has no trouble in 
imagining some of one hundred and forty. It will be 
seen that the fairy of Shelley is not a mere compound 
of incongruous natural objects, inartificially put 
together, and unaccompanied by any moral senti- 
ment—but a being, in the illustration of whose 
nature some physical elements are used collaterally 
as adjuncts, while the main conception springs 
immediately, or thus apparently springs, from the 
brain of the poet, enveloped in the moral sentiments 
of grace, of color, of motion—of the beautiful, of the 
mystical, of the august—in short, of the ideal. 


FANCY AND IMAGINATION 2 

The truth is, that the just distinction between 
the fancy and the imagination (and which is still 
but a distinction of degree) is involved in the consider- 
ation of the mystic. We give this as an idea of our 
own altogether. We have no authority for our opin- 
ion—but do not the less firmly hold it. The term 
mystic is here employed in the sense of Augustis 
William Schlegel, and of most other German critics. 
It is applied by them to that class of composition in 
which there lies beneath the transparent upper cur- 
rent of meaning, an under or suggestive one. What 
we vaguely term the moral of any sentiment is its 
mystic or secondary expression. It has the vast 
force of an accompaniment in music. ‘This vivifies 
the air; that spiritualizes the fanczful conception, and 
lifts it into the zdeal. 

This theory will bear, we think, the most rigorous 
tests which can be made applicable to it, and will be 
acknowledged as tenable by all who are themselves 
imaginative. If we carefully examine those poems, 
or portions of poems, or those prose romances, which 
mankind have been accustomed to designate as 
imaginative, (for an instinctive feeling leads us to 
employ properly the term whose full import we have 
still never been able to define,) it will be seen that all 
so designated are remarkable for the suggestive 
character which wehavediscussed. Theyarestrongly 
mystic—in the proper sense of the word. We will 
here only call to the reader’s mind, the Prometheus 
Vinctus of Aischylus; the Inferno of Dante; the Destruc- 
tion of Numantia by Cervantes; the Comus of Milton; 
the Ancient Mariner, the Christabel, and the Kubla 
Khan, of Coleridge; the Nightingale of Keats; and, 
most especially, the Sensitive Plant of Shelley, and 
the Undine of De La Motte Fouqué. These two 
latter poems (for we call them both such) are the 


228 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


finest possible examples of the purely zdeal. There 
is little of fancy here, and everything of imagination. 
With each note of the lyre is heard a ghostly, and not 
always a distinct, but an august and soul-exalting 
echo. In every glimpse of beauty presented, we 
catch, through long and wild vistas, dim bewildering 
visions of a far more ethereal beauty beyond. But 
not so in poems which the world has always persisted 
in terming fanciful. Here the upper current is 
often exceedingly brilliant and beautiful; but then 
men feel that this upper current zs all. No Naiad 
voice addresses them from below. ‘The notes of the 
air of the song do not tremble with the according 
tones of the accompaniment. 

It is the failure to perceive these truths which has 
occasioned the embarrassment experienced by our 
critics while discussing the topic of Moore’s station 
in the poetic world—that hesitation with which — 
we are obliged to refuse him the loftiest rank 
among the most noble. The popular voice, and the 
popular heart, have denied him that happiest 
quality, imagination—and here the popular voice 
(because for once it is gone with the popular heart) 
is tright—but yet only relatively so. Imagination 
is not the leading feature of the poetry of Moore; but 
he possesses it in no little degree. 

We will quote a few instances from the poem now 
before us—instances which will serve to exemplify 
the distinctive feature which we have attributed 
to ideality. 

It is the suggestive force which exalts and ethereal- 
izes the passages we copy. 


Or is it that there lurks, indeed, 
Some truth in man’s prevailing creed, 
And that our guardians from on high, 


FANCY AND IMAGINATION 229 


Come, in that pause from toil and sin, 
To put the senses’ curtain by, 
And on the wakeful soul look in! 


Again— 


The eternal pyramids of Memphis burst 
Awfully on my sight—standing sublime 
’Twixt earth and heaven, the watch-towers of time, 
From whose lone summit, when his reign hath past, 
From earth forever, he will look his last. 


And again— 


Is there for man no hope—but this which dooms 
His only lasting trophies to be tombs! 

But ’tis not so—earth, heaven, all nature shows 
He may become immortal, may unclose 

The wings within him wrapt, and proudly rise 
Redeemed from earth a creature of the skies! 


And here— 


The pyramid shadows, stretching from the light, 
Look like the first colossal steps of night, 
Stalking across the valley to invade 

The distant hills of porphyry with their shade! 


And once more— 


There Silence, thoughtful God, who loves 
The neighborhood of Death, in groves 

Of asphodel lies hid, and weaves 

His hushing spell among the leaves 


Such lines as these, we must admit, however, are 


not of frequent occurrence in the poem—the sum of 
whose great beauty is composed of the several sums 
of a world of minor excellences. 


Moore has always been renowned for the number 


and appositeness, as well as novelty, of his similes; 
and the renown thus acquired is strongly indicial of 
his deficiency in that nobler merit—the noblest of 
them all. No poet thus distinguished was ever 


230 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


richly ideal. Pope and Cowper are remarkable in- 
stances in point. Similes (so much insisted upon by 
the critics of the reign of Queen Anne) are never, in 
‘our opinion, strictly in good taste, whatever may be 
said to the contrary, and certainly can never be 
made to accord with other high qualities, except 
when naturally arising from the subject in the way 
of illustration—and, when thus arising, they have 
seldom the merit of novelty. To be novel, they 
must fail in essential particulars. The higher minds 
will avoid their frequent use. They form no por- 
tion of the ideal, and appertain to the fancy alone. 

We proceed with a few random observations 
upon Alciphron. The poem is distinguished through- 
out by a very happy facility which has never been 
mentioned in connexion with its author, but which 
has much to do with the reputation he has obtained. 
We allude to the facility with which he recounts 
a poetical story in a prosaic way. By thisis meant 
that he preserves the tone and method of arrange- 
ment of a prose relation, and thus obtains great 
advantages over his more stilted compeers. His is 
no poetical style, (such, for example, as the French 
have—a distinct style for a distinct purpose,) but 
an easy and ordinary prose manner, ornamented into 
poetry. By means of this he is enabled to enter, with — 
ease, into details which would baffle any other versifier 
of the age, and at which Lamartine would stand 
aghast. For anything that we see to the contrary, 
Moore might solve a cubic equation in verse. His 
facility in this respect is truly admirable, and is, no 
doubt, the result of long practice after mature 
deliberation. We refer the reader to page 50, of the 
pamphlet now reviewed; where the minute and 
conflicting incidents of the descent into the pyra- 
mid are detailed with absolutely more precision than 


FANCY AND IMAGINATION 231 


we have ever known a similar relation detailed 
with in prose. 

In general dexterity and melody of versification 
the author of Lalla Rookh is unrivalled; but he is 
by no means at all times accurate, falling occasion- 
ally into the common foible of throwing accent 
upon syllables too unimportant to sustain it. Thus, 
in the lines which follow, where we have italicized 
the weak syllables: 


And mark ’tis nigh; already the sun bids. . ... 
While hark from all the temples a rich swell. . . . 
I rushed into the cool night air. 


He also too frequently draws out the word Heaven 
into two syllables—a protraction which it never 
will support. 

His English is now and then objectionable, as, at 
page 26, where he speaks of 


lighted barks 
That down Syene’s cataract shoots. 


making shoots rhyme with flutes, below; also, at page 
6, and elsewhere, where the word none has improp- 
erly a singular, instead of a plural force. But 
such criticism as this is somewhat captious, for in 
general he is most highly polished. 

At page 27, he has stolen his ‘‘woven snow” from 
the ventum textilem of Apuleius. 

At page 8, he either himself has misunderstood the 
tenets of Epicurus, or wilfully misrepresents them 
through the voice of Alciphron. We incline to the 
former idea, however; as the philosophy of that 
most noble of the sophists is habitually perverted by 
the moderns. Nothing could be more spiritual and 
less sensual than the doctrines we so torture into 
wrong. But we have drawn out this notice at 


232 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


somewhat too great length, and must conclude. 
In truth, the exceeding beauty of “‘Alciphron”’ has 
bewildered and detained us. We could not point 
‘out a poem in any language which, as a whole, 
greatly excels it. It is far superior to Lalla Rookh. 
While Moore does not reach, except in rare snatches, 
the height of the loftiest qualities of some whom we 
have named, yet he has written finer poems than any, 
of equal length, by the greatest of his rivals. His 
radiance, not always as bright as some flashes from 
other pens, is yet a radiance of equable glow, whose 
total amount of light exceeds, by very much, we 
think, that total amount in the case of any cotem- 
porary writer whatsoever. <A vivid fancy; an epi- 
grammatic spirit; a fine taste; vivacity, dexterity, 
and a musical ear; have made him very easily what 
he is, the most popular poet now living—if not the 
most popular that ever lived—and, perhaps, a slight — 
modification at birth of that which phrenologists 
have agreed to term temperament, might have made 
him the truest and noblest votary of the muse of any 
age orclime. Asitis, we have only casual glimpses 
of that mens divinior which is assuredly enshrined 
within him. 


E. P, WHIPPLE AND OTHER CRITICS 233 


E. P. WHIPPLE AND OTHER CRITICS 


» UR most analytic, if not altogether our best 
# critic, (Mr. Whipple, perhaps, excepted,) 
Xf is Mr. William A. Jones, author of ‘‘The 
Analyst.” How he would write elaborate criticisms 
I cannot say; but his summary judgments of authors 
are, in general, discriminative and profound. In fact, 
his papers on Emerson and on Macaulay, published 
in “‘Arcturus,’’ are better than merely ‘‘profound,”’ 
if we take the word in its now desecrated sense; for 
they are at once pointed, lucid, and just:—as sum- 
maries, leaving nothing to be desired. 

Mr. Whipple has less analysis, and far less candor, 
as his depreciation of ‘‘Jane Eyre”’ will show; but 
he excells Mr. Jones in sensibility to Beauty, and is 
thus the better critic of Poetry. I have read noth- 
ing finer in its way than his eulogy on Tennyson. 
I say “‘eulogy’’—for the essay in question is un- 
happily little more:—and Mr. Whipple’s paper on 
Miss Barrett, was nothing more. He has less discrim- 
ination than Mr. Jones, and a more obtuse sense of 
the critical office. In fact, he has been infected with 
that unmeaning and transparent heresy—the cant 
of critical Boswellism, by dint of which we are to 
shut our eyes tightly to all autorial blemishes, and 
open them, like owls, to all autorial merits. Papers 
thus composed may be good in their way, just 
as an impertinent cicerone is good in his way; and the 
way, in either case, may still be a small one. 

Boccalini, his ‘‘Advertisements from Parnassus,” 





234 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


tells us that Zoilus once presented Apollo with a very 
caustic review of a very admirable poem. The god — 
asked to be shown the beauties of the work; but the 
critic replied that he troubled himself only about | 
the errors. Hereupon Apollo gave him a sack of un- 
winnowed wheat—bidding him pick out all the chaff 
for his pains. | 
Now this fable does very well as a hit at the critics; — 
but Iam by no means sure that the Deity was in the 
right. The fact is, that the limits of the strict criti- 
cal duty are grossly misapprehended. We may go 
so far as to say that, while the critic is permitted to 
play, at times, the part of the mere commentator— 
while he is allowed, by way of merely interesting his 
readers, to put in the fairest light the merits of his — 
author—his legitimate task is still, in pointing out and © 
analyzing defects and showing how the work might — 
have been improved, to aid the general cause of Let- 
ters, without undue heed of the individual literary 
men. Beauty, to be brief, should be considered in 
the light of an axiom, which, to become at once evi- © 
dent, needs only to be distinctly put. It is not 
Beauty, if it require to be demonstrated as such:— 
and thus to point out too particularly the merits of a 
work, is to admit that they are not merits altogether. — 
When I say that both Mr. Jones and Mr. Whipple © 
are, in some degree, imitators of Macaulay, I have — 
no design that my words should be understood as 
disparagement. The style and general conduct of 
Macaulay’s critical papers could scarcely be improved. — 
To call his manner ‘‘conventional,’’ is to do it gross 
injustice. The manner of Carlyle 7s conventional— 
with himself. The style of Emerson is conventional 
—with himself and Carlyle. The style of Miss 
Fuller is conventional—with herself and Emerson 
and Carlyle:—that is to say, it is a triple-distilled 


E. P. WHIPPLE AND OTHER CRITICS 235 


conventionality:—and by the word ‘‘conventional- 
ity,” as here used, I mean very nearly what, as re- 
gards personal conduct, we style ‘‘affectation’’—that 
_ is, an assumption of airs or tricks which have no basis 
in reason or common sense. The quips, quirks, 
and curt oracularities of the Emersons, Alcots and 
Fullers, are simply Lily’s Euphuisms revived. Very 
_ different, indeed, are the peculiarities of Macaulay. 
He has his mannerisms; but we see that, by dint 
of them, he is enabled to accomplish the extremes 
of unquestionable excellences—the extreme of clear- 
ness, of vigor (dependent upon clearness) of grace, 
and very especially of thoroughness. For his 
short’ sentences, for his antitheses, for his modula- 
tions, for his climaxes—for everything that he does— 
a very slight analysis suffices to show a distinct rea- 
son. His manner, thus, is simply the perfection of 
that justifiable rhetoric which has its basis in com- 
mon sense; and to say that such rhetoric is never 
called in to the aid of genzus, is simply to disparage 
genius, and by no means to discredit the rhetoric. 
It is nonsense to assert that the highest genius 
would not be benefited by attention to its modes 
of manifestation—by availing itself of that Natural 
Art which it too frequently despises. Is it not evi- 
dent that the more intrinsically valuable the rough 
diamond, the more gain accrues to it from polish? 

Now, since it would be nearly impossible to vary 
the rhetoric of Macaulay, in any material degree, 
without deterioration in the essential particulars 
of clearness, vigor, etc., those who write after 
Macaulay have to choose between the two horns of 
a dilemma:—they must be weak and original, or 
imitative and strong:—and since imitation in a 
case of this kind, is merely adherence to Truth and 
Reason as pointed out by one who feels their value, 


136 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


the author who should forego the advantages of the 
‘‘imitation’”’ for the mere sake of being erroneously 
original, ‘‘n’est pas st sage qu'il crott.”’ 

The true course to be pursued by our critics— 
justly sensible of Macaulay’s excellences—is not, 
however, to be content with tamely following in his 
footsteps—but to outstrip him in his own path— 
a path not so much his as Nature’s. We must not 
fall into the error of fancying that he is perfect 
merely because he excells (in point of style) all his 
British cotemporaries. Some such idea as this seems 
to have taken possession of Mr. Jones, when he says: 

“‘Macaulay’s style is admirable—full of color, 
perfectly clear, free from all obstructions, exactly 
English, and as pointedly antithetical as possible. | 
We have marked two passages on Southey and Byron, 
so happy as to defy improvement. ‘The one is a sharp 
epigrammatic paragraph on Southey’s political bias: 


Government is to Mr. Southey one of the fine arts. He 
judges of a theory or a public measure, of a religion, a 
political party, a peace or a war, as men judge of a picture 
or a statue, by the effect produced on his imagination. A 
chain of associations is to him what a chain of reasoning is 
to other men; and what he calls his opinions are, in fact, 
merely his tastes, 


The other a balanced character of Lord Byron: 


In the rank of Lord Byron, in his ‘understanding, in his © 
character, in his very person, there was a strange union of 
opposite extremes. He was born to all that men covet and 
admire. But in every one of those eminent advantages 
which he possessed over others, there was mingled something 
of misery and debasement. He was sprung from a house, 
ancient, indeed, and noble, but degraded and impoverished 
by a series of crimes and follies, which had attained a 
scandulous publicity. The kinsman whom he succeeded 
had died poor, and but for merciful judges, would have 
died upon the gallows. The young peer had great intel- 
lectual powers; yet there was an unsound part in his mind, 


E. P. WHIPPLE AND OTHER CRITICS 237 


He had naturally a generous and tender heart; but his 
temper was wayward and irritable. He had a head which 
statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which 
the beggars in the street mimicked. 


Let us now look at the first of these paragraphs. 
The opening sentence is inaccurate at all points. 
The word ‘‘government”’ does not give the author’s 
idea with sufficient definitiveness; for the term 
is more frequently applied to the system by which the 
affairs of a nation are regulated than to the act of 
regulating. “‘The government,” we say, for ex- 
ample, ‘“‘does so and so’—meaning those who 
govern. But Macaulay intends simply the act or 
acts called “‘governing,’’ and this word should have 
been used, as a matter of course. The ‘‘Mr.”’ pre- 
fixed to “‘Southey,” is superfluous; for no sneer is 
designed; and, in mustering a well-known author, 
we hint that he is not entitled to that exemption 
which we accord to Homer, Dante, or Shakspeare. 
“‘To Mr. Southey’”’ would have been right, had the 
succeeding words been “‘government seems one of 
the fine arts’”’:—but, as the sentence stands, ‘‘Wzth 
Mr. Southey” is demanded. ‘‘Southey,’’ too, being 
the principal subject of the paragraph, should pre- 
cede ‘‘government,’’ which is mentioned only in its 
relation to Southey. ‘‘One of the fine arts’’ is 
pleonastic, since the phrase conveys nothing more 
than ‘‘a fine art”’ would convey. 

The second sentence is quite as faulty. Here 
Southey loses his precedence as the subject; and thus 
the ‘‘He” should follow ‘‘a theory,” ‘‘a public 
measure,” etc. By ‘‘religion”’ is meant a “‘creed”’: 
—this latter word should therefore be used. The 
conclusion of the sentence is very awkward. Southey 
is said to judge of a peace or war, etc., as men judge 
of a picture or a statue, and the words which suc- 


238 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


ceed are intended to explain how men judge of a pic- 
ture or a statue:—these words should, therefore, 
run thus:—‘“‘by the effect produced on their imagina- 
‘tions.’ ‘‘Produced,’’ moreover, is neither so exact 
nor so ‘‘English” as “‘wrought.”’ In saying that 
Southey judges of a political party, etc., as men 
judge of a picture, etc., Southey is quite excluded 
from the category of ‘‘men.” ‘‘Other men,’ was 
no doubt originally written, but ‘‘other”’ erased, on 
account of the ‘‘other men”’ occurring in the sentence 
below. 

Coming to this last, we find that ‘‘a chain of asso- 
ciations’”’ is not properly parallelled by ‘‘a chain of 
reasoning. We must say either ‘‘a chain of associa- 
tion,” to meet the ‘‘reasoning”’ or ‘‘a chain of 
reasons,’ to meet the “‘associations.’’ The repeti- 
tion of ‘‘what”’ is awkward and unpleasant. The 
entire paragraph should be thus remodelled: i 

With Southey, governing is a fine art. Of a 
theory or a public measure—of a creed, a political 
party, a peace or a war—he judges by the imagina- 
tive effect; as only such things as pictures or statues 
are judged of by other men. What to them a chain 
of reasoning is, to him isa chain of association; and, 
as to his opinions, they are nothing but his tastes. 

The blemishes in the paragraph about Byron are 
more negative than those in the paragraph about 
Southey. The first sentence needs vivacity. The — 
adjective ‘‘opposite” is superfluous:—so is the par- 
ticle ‘‘there.’? The second and third sentences are, 
properly, one. ‘“‘Some” would fully supply the 
place of ‘something of.”” The whole phrase ‘‘which 
he possessed over others,’ is supererogatory. ‘‘Was 
sprung’’ in place of ‘‘sprang,” is altogether unjusti- 
fiable. The triple repetition of ‘‘and,’” in the 
fourth sentence, is awkward. ‘‘Notorious crimes 


E. P. WHIPPLE AND OTHER CRITICS 239 


and follies,” would express all that is implied in 
“‘crimes and follies which had attained a scandalous 
publicity.” The fifth sentence might be well cur- 
tailed; and as it stands, has an unintentional and un- 
pleasant sneer. “‘Intellect” would do as well as 
“intellectual powers’’; and this (the sixth) sentence 
might otherwise be shortened advantageously. The 
whole paragraph, in my opinion, would be better 
thus expressed: 

In Lord Byron’s rank, understanding, character 
—even in his person—we find a strange union of 
extremes. Whatever men covet and admire, be- 
came his by right of birth; yet debasement and mis- 
ery were mingled with each of his eminent advan- 
tages. He sprang from a house, ancient it is true, 
and noble, but degraded and impoverished by a 
series of notorious crimes. But for merciful judges, 
the pauper kinsman whom he succeeded would have 
been hanged. The young peer had an intellect great, 
perhaps, yet partially unsound. His heart was 
generous, but his temper wayward; and while statu- 
aries copied his head, beggars mimicked the de- 
formity of his foot. 

In these remarks, my object is not so much to 
point out inaccuracies in the most accurate stylist of 
his age, as to hint that our critics might surpass him 
on his own ground, and yet leave themselves some- 
thing to learn in the moralities of manner. 

Nothing can be plainer than that our position, as 
a literary colony of Great Britain, leads us into 
wronging, indirectly, our own authors by exagger- 
ating the merits of those across the water. Our 
most reliable critics extol—and extol without dis- 
crimination—such English compositions as, if writ- 
ten in America, would be either passed over with- 
out notice or unscrupulously condemned. Mr. 


240 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Whipple, for example, whom I have mentioned in 
this connexion with Mr. Jones, is decidedly one of 
our most ‘“‘reliable” critics. His honesty I dispute 
.as little as I doubt his courage or his talents—but 
here is an instance of the want of common discrimi- 
nation into which he is occasionally hurried, by un- 
due reverence for British intellect and British 
opinion. Ina review of ‘“‘The Drama of Exile and 
other Poems,’’ by Miss Barrett, (now Mrs. Browning, 
he speaks of the following passage as “‘in every 
respect faultless—sublime?”’ 


Hear the steep generations how they fall 
Adown the visionary stairs of Time, 

Like supernatural thunders—far yet near, 
Sowing their fiery echoes through the hills! 


Now here, saying nothing of the affectation in 


*‘adown’’; not alluding to the insoluble paradox of | 


‘“‘far yet near’; not mentioning the inconsistent 
metaphor involved in the sowing of fiery echoes; ad- 
verting but slightly to the misusage of ‘‘like” in 
place of ‘‘as’’; and to the impropriety of making 
anything fall like thunder, which has never been 
known to fall at all; merely hinting, too, at the 
misapplication of ‘‘steep’”’ to the ‘‘generations” 
instead of to the “‘stairs’”—(a perversion in no de- 
gree justified by the fact that so preposterous a 
figure as synecdoche exists in the school-books:)— 
letting these things pass, we shall still find it diffi- 
cult to understand how Mrs. Browning should have 
been led to think the principal idea itself—the ab- 
stract idea—the idea of tumbling down stairs, in any 
shape, or under any circumstance—either a poetical 
or a decorous conception. And yet Mr. Whipple 
speaks of it as ‘‘sublime.” That the lines narrowly 
missed sublimity, I grant:—that they came within 


E. P. WHIPPLE AND OTHER CRITICS 241 


a step of it, I admit; but, unhappily, the step is that 
one step which, time out of mind, has intervened 
between the sublime and the ridiculous. So true 
is this that any person—that even I—with a very 
partial modification of the imagery—a modification 
that shall not interfere with its richly spiritual tone— 
may elevate the passage into unexceptionability. 
For example: 


Hear the far generations—how they crash 
From crag to crag down the precipitous Time, 
In multitudinous thunders that upstartle 
Aghast, the echoes from their cavernous lairs 
In the visionary hills! 


No doubt my version has its faults; but it has at 
least the merit of consistency. Not only is a 
mountain more poetical than a pair of stairs, but 
echoes are more appropriately typified as wild beasts 
than as seeds; and echoes and wild beasts agree better 
with a mountain than does a pair of stairs with the 
sowing of seeds—even admitting that these seeds 
be seeds of fire, and be sown broadcast ‘‘among the 
hills” by a steep generation while in the act of tumb- 
ling down the stairs—that is to say, of coming 
down the stairs in too great a hurry to be capable of 
sowing the seeds as accurately as all seeds should be 
sown:—nor is the matter rendered any better for 
Mrs. Browning, even if the construction of her sen- 
tence be understood as implying that the fiery seeds 
were sown, not immediately by the steep generations 
that tumbled down the stairs, but mediately, through 
the intervention of the ‘‘supernatural thunders”’ 
that were occasioned by the steep generations that 
were so unlucky as to tumble down the stairs. 


Vou. VI—rx6 


242 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


J. FENIMORE COOPER 


tf YANDOTTE, or The Hutted Knoll,” is, 
‘ \ in its general features, precisely similar 

to the novels enumerated in the title.* 

It is a forest subject; and, when we say this, we 
give assurance that the story is a good one; for Mr. 
Cooper has never been known to fail, either in 
the forest or upon the sea. The interest, as usual, 
has no reference to plot, of which, indeed, our 
novelist seems altogether regardless, or incapa- 
ble, but depends, first upon the nature of the 
theme; secondly, upon a Robinson-Crusoe-like detail 
in its management; and thirdly, upon the frequently 
repeated portraiture of the half-civilized Indian. 
In saying that the interest depends, first, upon the 
nature of the theme, we mean to suggest that this 
theme—life in the wilderness—is one of intrinsic and 
universal interest, appealing to the heart of man in all 
phases; a theme, like that of life upon the ocean, so 
unfailingly omniprevalent in its power of arresting 
and absorbing attention, that while success or popu- 
larity is, with a subject, expected as a matter of 
course, a failure might be properly regarded as con- 
clusive evidence of imbecility on the part of the 
author. The two theses in question have been 
handled usque ad nauseam—and this through the 
instinctive perception of the universal interest which 
appertains to them. A writer, distrustful of his 


* Wyandotté, or the Hutted Knoll. A tale, by the author of 
‘‘The Path-finder,’’ ‘“‘Deerslayer,’’ ‘‘Last of the Mohicans,” 
‘‘Pioneers,”’ ‘‘ Prairie.” &c. &c. Philadelphia, Lea & Blanchard. 


J. FENIMORE COOPER 243 


powers, can scarcely do better than discuss either one 
or the other. Aman of genius will rarely, and should 
never, undertake, either; first, because both are 
excessively hackneyed; and, secondly, because the 
reader never fails, in forming his opinion of a book, 
to make discount, either wittingly or unwittingly, 
for that intrinsic interest which is inseparable from 
the subject and independent of the manner in which 
it is treated. Very few and very dull indeed are 
those who do not instantaneously perceive the dis- 
tinction; and thus there are two great classes of 
fictions—a popular and widely circulated class, read 
with pleasure, but without admiration—in which the 
author is lost or forgotten; or remembered, if at all, 
with something very nearly akin to contempt; and 
then, a class not so popular, nor so widely diffused, 
in which, at every paragraph, arises a distinctive 
and highly pleasurable interest, springing from our 
perception and appreciation of the skill employed, 
or the genius evinced in the composition. After 
perusal of the one class, we think solely of the book— 
after reading the other, chiefly of the author. The 
former class leads to popularity—the latter to fame. 
In the former case, the books sometimes live, while 
the authors usually die; in the latter, even when the 
works perish, the man survives. Among American 
writers of the less generally circulated, but more 
worthy and more artistical fictions, we may mention 
Mr. Brockden Brown, Mr. John Neal, Mr. Simms, 
Mr. Hawthorne; at the head of the more popular 
division we may place Mr. Cooper. 

“The Hutted Knoll,” without pretending to 
detail facts, gives a narrative of fictitious events, 
similar, in nearly all respects, to occurrences which 
actually happened during the opening scenes of the 
Revolution, and at other epochs of our history. It 


244 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


pictures the dangers, difficulties, and distresses of a 
large family, living, completely insulated, in the 
forest. The tale commences with a description of 
the ‘‘region which lies in the angle formed by the 
junction of the Mohawk with the Hudson, extending 
as far south as the line of Pennsylvania, and west to 
the verge of that vast rolling plain which composes 
Western New York’’—a region of which the novelist 
has already frequently written, and the whole of 
which, with a trivial exception, was a wilderness 
before the Revolution. Within this district, and 
on a creek running into the Unadilla, a certain 
Captain Willoughby purchases an estate or ‘‘patent,” 
and there retires, with his family and dependents, 
to pass the close of his life in agricultural pursuits. 
He has been an officer in the British army, but, after 
serving many years, has sold his commission, and 
purchased one for his only son, Robert, who alone | 
does not accompany the party into the forest. This 
party consists of the captain himself; his wife; his 
daughter, Beulah; an adopted daughter, Maud 
Meredith; an invalid sergeant, Joyce, who had 
served under the captain; a Presbyterian preacher, 
Mr. Woods; a Scotch mason, Jamie Allen; an Irish 
laborer, Michael O’Hearn; a Connecticut man, Joel 
Strides; four negroes, Old Plin and young Plin, 
Big Smash and little Smash; eight axe-men; a house- 
carpenter: a mill-wright, &c., &c. Besides these, a 
Tuscarora Indian called Nick, or Wyandotté, accom- 
panies the expedition. This Indian, who figures 
largely in the story, and gives it its title, may be con- 
sidered as the principal character—the one chiefly 
elaborated. He is an outcast from his tribe, has 
been known to Captain Willoughby for thirty years, 
and is a compound of all the good and bad qualities 
which made up the character of the half-civilized 


J. FENIMORE COOPER 245 


Indian. He does not remain with the settlers; but 
appears and re-appears at intervals upon the scene. 

Nearly the whole of the first volume is occupied 
with a detailed account of the estate purchased, 
(which is termed ‘‘The Hutted Knoll,” from a natural 
mound upon which the principal house is built) 
and of the progressive arrangements and improve- 
ments. Toward the close of the volume the Revo- 
lution commences; and the party at the ‘‘Knoll” 
is besieged by a band of savages and ‘‘rebels,’’ 
with whom an understanding exists, on the part of 
Joel Strides, the Yankee. This traitor, instigated by 
the hope of possessing Captain Willoughby’s estate, 
should it be confiscated, brings about a series of de- 
fections from the party of the settlers, and finally, 
deserting himself, reduces the whole number to six 
or seven, capable of bearing arms. Captain Will- 
oughby resolves, however, to defend his post. 
His son, at this juncture, pays him a clandestine 
visit, and, endeavoring to reconnoitre the position 
of the Indians, is made captive. The captain, in an 
attempt at rescue, is murdered by Wyandotté, whose 
vindictive passions had been aroused by ill-timed 
wllusions, on the part of Willoughby, to floggings 
previously inflicted, by his orders, upon the Indian. 
Wyandotté, however, having satisfied his personal 
vengeance, is still the ally of the settlers. He guides 
Maud, who is beloved by Robert, to the hut in which 
the latter is confined, and effects his escape. 
Aroused by this escape, the Indians precipitate thei1 
attack upon the Knoll, which, through the previous 
treachery of Strides in ill-hanging a gate, is immedi- 
ately carried. Mrs. Willoughby, Beulah, and others 
of the party, are killed. Maud is secreted and thus 
saved by Wyandotté. At the last moment, when 
all is apparently lost, a reinforcement appears, un- 


246 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


der command of Evert Beekman, the husband of 
Beulah; and the completion of the massacre is 
prevented. Woods, the preacher, had left the Knoll, 
and made his way through the enemy, to inform 
Beekman of the dilemma of his friends. Maud and 
Robert Willoughby are, of course, happily married. 
The concluding scene of the novel shows us Wyan- 
dotté repenting the murder of Willoughby, and 
converted to Christianity through the agency of 
Woods. 

It will be at once seen that there is nothing orzginat 
in this story. On the contrary, it is even excessively 
common-place. The lover, forexample, rescued from 
captivity by the mistress; the Knoll carried through 
the treachery of an inmate; and the salvation of the 
besieged, at the very last moment, by a reinforce- 
ment arriving, in consequence of a message borne to 
a friend by one of the besieged, without the cogni- 
zance of the others; these, we say, are incidents which 
have been the common property of every novelist 
since the invention of letters. And as for Plot, 
there has been no attempt at anything of the kind. 
The tale is a mere succession of events, scarcely any 
one of which has any necessary dependence upon 
any one other. Plot, however, is at best, an artifi- 
cial effect, requiring, like music, not only a natural 
bias, but long cultivation of taste for its full appre- 
ciation; some of the finest narratives in the world— 
_“Gil-Blas” and ‘‘Robinson Crusoe’? for example— 
have been written without its employment; and 
“The Hutted Knoll,” like all the sea and forest 
novels of Cooper, has been made deeply interesting, 
although depending upon this peculiar source of 
interest not at all. Thus the absence of plot can 
never be critically regarded as a defect; although its 
judicious use, in.all cases aiding and in no case in- 


J. FENIMORE COOPER 247 


juring other effects, must be regarded as of a very 
high order of merit. 

There are one or two points, however, in the mere 
conduct of the story now before us, which may, 
perhaps, be considered as defective. For instance, 
there is too much obviousness in all that appertains 
to the hanging of the large gate. In more thana 
dozen instances, Mrs. Willoughby is made to allude 
to the delay in the hanging; so that the reader 
is too positively and pointedly forced to perceive that 
this delay is to result in the capture of the Knoll. 
As we are never in doubt of the fact, we feel dimin- 
ished interest when it actually happens. A single 
vague allusion, well managed, would have been in 
the true artistical spirit. 

Again: we see too plainly, from the first, that 
Beekman is to marry Beulah, and that Robert 
Willoughby is to marry Maud. The killing of Beulah, 
of Mrs. Willoughby, and Jamie Allen, produces, too, 
a painful impression, which does not properly ap- 
pertain to the right fiction. Their deaths affect us 
as revolting and supererogatory; since the purposes 
of the story are not thereby furthered in any regard. 
To Willoughby’s murder, however distressing, the 
reader makes no similar objection; merely because 
in his decease is fulfilled a species of poetical justice. 
We may observe here, nevertheless, that his repeated 
references to his flogging the Indian seem unnatural, 
because we have otherwise no reason to think him 
a fool, or a madman, and these references, under 
the circumstances, are absolutely insensate. We 
object, also, to the manner in which the general in- 
terest is dragged out, or suspended. The besieging 
party is kept before the Knoll so long, while so little 
is done, and so many opportunities of action are lost, 
that the reader takes it for granted that nothing 


248 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


of consequence will occur—that the besieged will be 
finally delivered. He gets so accustomed to the 
presence of danger that its excitement at length de- 
parts. The action is not sufficiently rapid. There 
is too much procrastination. There is too much 
mere talk for talk’s sake. The interminable dis- 
cussions between Woods and Captain Willoughby 
are, perbaps, the worst feature of the book, for they 
have not even the merit of referring to the matters 
on hand. In general, there is quite too much collo- 
quy for the purpose of manifesting character, and too 
little for the explanation of motive. The characters 
of the drama would have been better made out by 
action; while the motives to action, the reasons for 
the different courses of conduct adopted by the 
dramatis persone, might have been made to proceed 
more satisfactorily from their own mouths, in casual 
conversations, than from that of the author in person. 
To conclude our remarks upon the head of ill-con- 
duct in the story, we may mention occasional inci- 
dents of the merest melodramatic absurdity; as, for 
example, at page 156, cf the second volume, where 
“Willoughby had an arm around the waist of Maud, 
and bore her forward with a rapidity to which her 
own strength was entirely unequal.’’ We may be 
permitted to doubt whether a young lady, of sound 
health and limbs, exists, within the limits of Christen- 
dom, who could not run faster, on her own proper 
feet, for any considerable distance, than she could 
be carried upon one arm of either the Cretan Milo or 
of the Hercules Farnese. 

On the other hand, it would be easy to designate 
many particulars which are admirably handled. 
The love of Maud Meredith for Robert Willoughby is 
painted with exquisite skill and truth. The incident 
of the tress of hair and box is naturally and effect- 


J. FENIMORE COOPER 240 


ively conceived. Ai fine collateral interest is thrown 
over the whole narrative by the connexion of the 
theme with that of the Revolution; and, especially, 
there is an excellent dramatic point, at page 124 of 
_ the second volume, where Wyandotté, remembering 
the stripes inflicted upon him by Captain Willoughby, 
is about to betray him to his foes, when his purpose 
is arrested by a casual glimpse, through the forest, 
of the hut which contains Mrs. Willoughby, whohad 
preserved the life of the Indian, by inoculation for 
the small-pox. 

In the depicting of character, Mr. Cooper has been 
unusually successful in ‘‘Wyandotté.”” One or two 
of his personages, to be sure, must be regarded as 
little worth. Robert Willoughby, like most novel 
heroes, is a nobody; that is to say, there is nothing 
about him which may be looked upon as distinctive. 
Perhaps he is rather silly than otherwise; as, for in- 
stance, when he confuses all his father’s arrange- 
ments for his concealment, and bursts into the room 
before Strides—afterward insisting upon accompany- 
ing that person to the Indian encampment, without 
any possible or impossible object. Woods, the par- 
son, is a sad bore, upon the Dominie Sampson plan, 
andis, moreover, caricatured. OfCaptain Willoughby 
we have already spoken—he is too often on stilts. 
Evert Beekman and Beulah are merely episodical. 
Joyce is nothing in the world but Corporal Trim— 
or, rather, Corporal Trim and water. Jamie Allen, 
with his prate about Catholicism, is insufferable. 
But Mrs. Willoughby, the humble, shrinking, wom- 
‘anly wife, whose whole existence centres in her 
affections, is worthy of Mr. Cooper. Maud Meredith 
is still better. In fact, we know no female portrai- 
ture, even in Scott, which surpasses her; and yet the 
world has been given to understand, by the enemies 


250 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


of the novelist, that he is incapable of depicting 
awoman. Joel Strides will be recognised by all who 
are conversant with his general prototypes of Connec- 
ticut. Michael O’Hearn, the County Leitrim man, 
is an Irishman all over, and his portraiture abounds 
in humor; as, for example, at page 31, of the first 
volume, where he has a difficulty with a skiff, not 
being able to account for its revolving upon its own 
axis, instead of moving forward! or, at page 132, | 
where, during divine service, to exclude at least a 
portion of the heretical doctrine, he stops one of his 
ears with his thumb; or, at page 195, where a passage 
occurs so much to our purpose that we will be par- 
doned for quoting it in full. Captain Willoughby 
is drawing his son up through a window, from his 
enemies below. ‘The assistants, placed at a distance 
from this window to avoid observation from without, 
are ignorant of what burthen is at the end of the rope: 


The men did as ordered, raising their load from the ground 
a foot or two at a time. In this manner the burthen 
approached, yard after yard, until it was evidently drawing 
near the window. 

“It’s the captain hoisting up the big baste of a hog, for 
provisioning the hoose again a saige,’’ whispered Mike to 
the negroes, who grinned as they tugged; “and, when the 
craitur squails, see to it, that ye do not squail yourselves.” 
At that moment the head and shoulders of aman appeared 
at the window. Mike let go the rope, seized a chair, and was 
about to knock the intruder upon the head; but the 
captain arrested the blow. 

“It’s one o’ the vagabone Injins that has undermined the 
hog and come up in its stead,’’ roared Mike. 

“It’s my son,”’ said the captain; “see that you are silent 
and secret.” : 


The negroes are, without exception, admirably 
drawn. The Indian, Wyandotté, however, is the 
great feature of the book, and is, in every respect, 


J. FENIMORE COOPER 251 


equal to the previous Indian creations of the author 
of ‘‘The Pioneer.’”’ Indeed, we think this ‘‘forest 
gentleman” superior to the other noted heroes of 
his kind—the heroes which have been immortalized 
by our novelist. His keen sense of the distinction, 
in his own character, between the chief, Wyandotté, 
and the drunken vagabond, Sassy Nick; his chival- 
rous delicacy toward Maud, in never disclosing to 
her that knowledge of her real feelings toward 
Robert Willoughby, which his own Indian intuition 
had discovered; his enduring animosity toward 
Captain Willoughby, softened, and for thirty years 
delayed, through his gratitude to the wife; and then, 
the vengeance consummated, his pity for that wife 
conflicting with his exultation at the deed—these, we 
say, are all traits of a lofty excellence indeed. Per- 
haps the most effective passage in the book, and 
that which, most distinctively, brings out the charac- 
ter of the Tuscarora, is to be found at pages 50, 51, 52 
and 53 of the second volume, where, for some trivial 
misdemeanor, the captain threatens to make use of 
the whip. ‘he manner in which the Indian harps 
upon the threat, returning to it again and again, in 
every variety of phrase, forms one of the finest pieces 
of mere character-painting with which we have any 
acquaintance. 

The most obvious and most unaccountable faults 
of ‘‘The Hutted Knoll,’’ are those which appertain 
to the style—to the mere grammatical construction; 
—for, in other and more important particulars of 
style, Mr. Cooper, of late days, has made a very 
manifest improvement. His sentences, however, are 
arranged with an awkwardness so remarkable as to 
be matter of absolute astonishment, when we consider 
the education of the author, and his long and con- 
tinual practice withthe pen. In minute descriptions 


252 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


of localities, any verbal inaccuracy, or confusion, be- 
comes a source of vexation and misunderstanding, 
detracting very much from the pleasure of perusal; 
and in these inaccuracies ‘‘Wyandotté” abounds. 
Although, for instance, we carefully read and re-read 
that portion of the narrative which details the 
situation of the Knoll, and the construction of the 
buildings and walls about it, we were forced to 
proceed with the story without any exact or definite 
impressions upon the subject. Similar difficulties, 
from similar causes, occur passim throughout the 
book. For example: at page 41, vol. I.: 

‘The Indian gazed at the house, with that fierce 
intentness which sometimes glared, in a manner 
that had got to be, in its ordinary aspects, dull and 
besotted.” This it is utterly impossible to com- 
prehend. We presume, however, the intention is to 
say that although the Indian’s ordinary manner 
(of gazing) had “‘got to be”’ dull and besotted, he 
occasionally gazed with an intentness that glared, 
and that he did so in the instance in question. The 
*“‘got to be”’ is atrocious—the whole sentence no less 
SO. 

Here at page 9, vol. I., is something excessively 
vague: ‘‘Of the latter character is the face of most 
of that region which lies in the angle formed by the 
junction of the Mohawk with the Hudson,” &c., &c. 
The Mohawk, joining the Hudson, forms two angles, 
of course,—an acute and an obtuse one; and, without 
farther explanation, it is difficult to say which is 
intended. 

At page 55, vol. I., we read:—‘‘ The captain, owing 
to his English education, had avoided straight lines, 
and formal paths; giving to the little spot the im- 
provement on nature which is a consequence of em- 
bellishing her works without destroying them. On 


J. FENIMORE COOPER 253 


each side of this lawn was an orchard, thrifty and 
young, and which were already beginning to show 
signs of putting forth their blossoms.’’ Here we are 
tautologically informed that improvement is a con- 
sequence of embellishment, and supererogatorily told 
that the rule holds good only where the embellish- 
ment is not accompanied by destruction. Upon 
the “‘each orchard were” it is needless to comment. 

At page 30, vol. I., is something similar, where 
Strides is represented as “‘never doing anything that 
required a particle more than the exertion and 
strength that were absolutely necessary to effect his 
object.” Did Mr. C. ever hear of any labor that 
required more exertion than was necessary? He 
means to say that Strides exerted himself no farther 
than was necessary—that’s all. 

At page 59, vol. I., we find this sentence—‘‘He 
was advancing by the only road that was ever 
travelled by the stranger as he approached the Hut; 
or, he came up the valley.”” This is merely a vague- 
ness of speech. ‘“‘Or’’ is intended to imply ‘‘that is 
tosay.”’ The whole would be clearer thus—'‘ He was 
advancing by the valley—the only road travelled 
by a stranger approaching the Hut.’’ We have here 
sixteen words, instead of Mr. Cooper’s twenty-five. 

At page 8, vol. II., is an unpardonable awkward- 
ness, although an awkwardness strictly grammatical. 
“IT was a favorite, I believe, with, certainly was 
much petted by, both.” Upon this we need make 
no farther observation. It speaks for itself. 

We are aware, however, that there is a certain air 
of unfairness, in thus quoting detached passages, 
for animadversion of this kind; for, however strictly 
at random our quotations may really be, we have, 
of course, no means of proving the fact to our readers; 
and there are vo authors, from whose works individual 


254 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


inaccurate sentences may not be culled. But we 
mean to say that Mr. Cooper, no doubt through haste 
or neglect, is remarkably and especially inaccurate, 
as a general rule; and, by way of demonstrating this 
assertion, we will dismiss our extracts at random, 
and discuss some entire page of his composition. 
More than this: we will endeavor to select that 
particular page upon which it might naturally be 
supposed he would bestow the most careful atten- 
tion. The reader will say at once— ‘‘Let this be his 


first page—the first page of his Preface.’’ This page, 


then, shall be taken of course. 
The history of the borders is filled with legends of the 


sufferings of isolated families, during the troubled scenes 
of colonial warfare. ‘Those which we now offer to the 
reader, are distinctive in many of their leading facts, if not 
rigidly true in the details. The first alone is necessary to 
the legitimate objects of fiction. 


‘‘Abounds with legends,’’ would be better than 
“is filled with legends’’; for it is clear that if the 
history were filled with legends, it would be all legend 
and no history. ‘The word ‘‘of,’’ too, occurs, in the 
first sentence, with an unpleasant frequency. ‘The 
*‘those’’ commencing the second sentence, grammati- 
cally refers to the noun ‘“‘scenes,”’ immediately 
preceding, but is intended for ‘‘legends.’’ The ad- 
jective ‘‘distenctive’”’ is vaguely and altogether im- 
properly employed. Mr. C., we believe, means to 


say, merely, that although the details of his legends » 


may not be strictly true, facts similar to his leading 
ones have actually occurred. By use of the word 
*‘distinctive,’’ however, he has contrived to convey 
a meaning nearly converse. In saying that his 
legend is ‘‘distinctive’”’ in many of the leading facts, 
he has said what he, clearly, did not wish to say—viz: 
that his legend contained facts which distinguished 


J. FENIMORE COOPER 255 


it from all other legends—in other words, facts 
never before discussed in other legends, and be- 
longing peculiarly to his own. That Mr. C. did 
mean what we suppose, is rendered evident by the 
third sentence—‘‘The first alone is necessary to the 
legitimate objects of fiction.” This third sentence 
itself, however, is very badly constructed. ‘‘The 
first’’ can refer, grammatically, only to ‘‘facts”; but 
no such reference is intended. If we ask the ques- 
tion—what is meant by ‘“‘the first?”—what ‘‘alone 
is necessary to the legitimate objects of fiction?’— 
the natural reply is ‘‘that facts similar to the leading 
ones have actuallyhappened.’’ The circumstance is 
alone to be cared for—this consideration ‘‘alone is 
necessary to the legitimate objects of fiction.” 
“‘One of the misfortunes of a nation is to hear 
nothing besides its own praises.”’ ‘This is the fourth 
sentence, and is by no means lucid. The design is to 
say that individuals composing a nation, and living 
altogether within the national bounds, hear from 
each other only praises of the nation, and that this 
is a misfortune to the individuals, since it misleads 
them in regard to the actual condition of the 
nation. Here it will be seen that, to convey 
the intended idea, we have been forced to make 
distinction between the nation and its individual 
members; for it is evident that a nation is considered 
as such only in reference to other nations; and 
thus as a nation, it hears very much ‘‘besides its own 
praises’; that is to say, it hears the detractions of 
other rival nations. In endeavoring to compel his 
meaning within the compass of a brief sentence, Mr. 
Cooper has completely sacrificed its intelligibility. 
The fifth sentence runs thus:—‘‘Although the 
American Revolution was probably as just an effort 
as was ever made by a people to resist the first in- 


256 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


roads of oppression, the cause had its evil aspects, as 
well as all other human struggles.” 

The American Revolution is here improperly called 
an ‘‘effort.”’ The effort was the cause, of which the 
Revolution was the result. A rebellion is an 
‘‘effort”’ to effect a revolution. An “‘inroad of op- 
pression”’ involves an untrue metaphor; for ‘‘inroad”’ 
appertains to aggression, to attack, to active assault. 
‘‘The cause had its evil aspects as well as all other 
human struggles,” implies that the cause had not only 
its evil aspects, but had, also, all other human strug- 
gles. If the words must be retained at all, they 
should be thus arranged—‘‘The cause like [for as well 
as] all other human struggles, had its evil aspects’; 
or better thus—‘‘The cause had its evil aspect, as 
have all human struggles.”’ ‘‘Other’’ is superfluous. 

The sixth sentence is thus written;—‘‘We have 
been so much accustomed to hear everything ex- 
tolled, of late years, that could be dragged into the 
remotest connexion with that great event, and the 
principles which led to it, that there is danger of over- 
looking truth in a pseudo patriotism.” The ‘‘of 
late years,” here, should follow the ‘‘accustomed,”’ 
or precede the ‘‘We have been’’; and the Greek 
‘‘pseudo”’ is objectionable, since its exact equiva- 
lent is to be found in the English ‘‘false.’’ ‘‘Spu- 
rious’’ would be better, perhaps, than either. 

Inadvertences such as these sadly disfigure the 
style of ‘‘The Hutted Knoll’; and every true friend 
of its author must regret his inattention to the minor 
morals of the Muse. But these ‘‘minor morals,” 
it may be said, are trifles at best. Perhaps so. 
At all events, we should never have thought of dwell- 
ing so pertinaciously upon the unessential demerits 
of ‘‘Wyandotté,”’ could we have discovered any 
more momentous upon which to comment, 


ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT 257 


ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT* 


ty WELL-BRED man,” says Sir James Puckle, 
in his ‘“‘Gray Cap for a Green Head,” 
‘will never give himself the liberty to 
speak ill of women.” We emphasize the ‘‘man.” 
setting aside, for the present, certain rare commenta- 
tors and compilers of the species creatures neither 
precisely men, women, nor Mary Wollstonecraft’s— 
setting these aside as unclassifiable, we may observe 
that the race of critics are masculine—men. With 
the exception, perhaps, of Mrs. Anne Royal, we can 
call to mind no female who has occupied, even tem- 
porarily, the Zoilus throne. And this, the Salic law, 
is an evil; for the inherent chivalry of the critical 
man renders it not only an unpleasant task to him 
“‘to speak ill of a woman,’’ (and a woman and her 
book are identical,) but an almost impossible task 
not to laud her ad nauseam. In general, therefore, 
it is the unhappy lot of the authoress to be subjected, 
time after time, to the downright degradation of 
mere puffery. On her own side of the Atlantic, Miss 
Barrett has indeed, in one instance at least, escaped 
the infliction of this lamentable contumely and 
wrong; but if she had been really solicitous of its in- 
fliction in America, she could not have adopted a 
more effectual plan than that of saying a few words 
about ‘‘the great American people,” in an American 
edition of her work, published under the superin- 
* The Drama of Exile, and other Poems: By Elizabeth Bar- 
tett Barrett, Author of ‘‘The Seraphim,” and other Poems. 
Vou. VI—17 





258 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


tendence of an American author.* Of the innumer- 
able ‘‘native”’ notices of ‘‘The Drama of Exile,’ 
which have come under our observation, we can call 
‘to mind not one in which there is anything more re- 
markable than the critic’s dogged determination to 
find nothing barren, from Beersheba to Dan. An- 
other in the ‘‘Democratic Review”’ has proceeded so 
far, itis true, as to venture a very delicate insinuation 
to the effect that the poetess “‘will not fail to speak her 
mind though it bring upon her a bad rhyme’’; beyond 
this, nobody has proceeded: and as for the elab- 
orate paper in the new Whig Monthly, all that any- 
body can say or think, and all that Miss Barrett can 
feel respecting it is, that it is an eulogy as well written 
as itis an insult well intended. Nowof all the friends 
of the fair author, we doubt whether one exists, with 
more profound—with more enthusiastic reverence 
and admiration of her genius, than the writer of these 
words. And it is for this very reason, beyond all 
others, that he intends to speak of her the truth. 
Our chief regret is, nevertheless, that the limits of 
this work will preclude the possibility of our speak- 
ing this truth so fully, and so much in detail, as we 
could wish. By far the most valuable criticism 
that we, or that any one could give of the volumes 
now lying before us, would be the quotation of three- 
fourths of their contents. But we have this advan- 


* We are sorry to notice, in the American edition, a multitude 
of typographical errors, many of which affect the sense, and 
should therefore be corrected in a second impression, if called 
for. How far they are chargeable to the London copy, we 
are not prepared to say. ‘‘Froze,’’ for instance, is printed 
‘*frore.’’ “‘ Foregone,’’ throughout,’ is’: printed ")*‘forgone!’ 
‘*Wordless’’ is printed ‘‘worldless’’—‘‘worldly,”’ ‘‘wordly’’— 
**spilt,” “‘split,’’ etc., etc.,— while transpositions, false accents, 
and mis-punctuations abound. We indicate a few pages on 
which such inadvertences are to be discovered. Vol. 1-23, 
26, 37, 45, 53; 50, 80, 166, 174, 180, 185, 251. Vol. 2-109, 114, 
240, 247, 253) (272. 


a 


ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT 259 


tage—that the work has been long published, and 
almost universally read—and thus, in some measure, 
we may proceed, concisely, as if the text of our con- 
text, were an understood thing. 

In her preface to this, the ‘‘American edition” of 
her late poems, Miss Barrett, speaking of the Drama 
of Exile, says:—‘‘I decided on publishing it, after 
considerable hesitation and doubt. Its subject 
rather fastened on me than was chosen; and the 
form, approaching the model of the Greek tragedy, 
shaped itself under my hand rather by force of pleas- 
ure than of design. But when the compositional 
excitement had subsided, I felt afraid of my position. 
My own object was the new and strange experiment 
of the fallen Humanity, asit went forth from Paradise 
in the Wilderness, with a peculiar reference to Eve’s 
allotted grief, which, considering that self-sacrifice 
belonged to her womanhood, and the consciousness 
of being the organ of the Fall to her offence, appeared 
to me imperfectly apprehended hitherto, and more 
expressible by a woman than by a man.” In this 
abstract announcement of the theme, it is difficult 
to understand the ground of the poet’s hesitation 
to publish; for the theme in itself seems admirably 
adapted to the purposes of the closest drama. The 
poet, nevertheless, is, very properly, conscious of 
failure—a failure which occurs not in the general, but 
in the particular conception, and which must be 
placed to the account of ‘‘the model of the Greek 
tragedies.” The Greek tragedies had and even have 
high merits; but we act wisely in now substituting 
for the external and typified human sympathy of 
the antique Chorus, a direct, internal, living and 
moving sympathy itself; and although Aischylus 
might have done service as ‘‘a model,” to either 
Euripides or Sophocles, yet were Sophocles and 


260 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Euripides in London to-day, they would, perhaps, 
while granting a certain formless and shadowy 
grandeur, indulge a quiet smile at the shallowness 
‘and uncouthness of that Art, which, in the old am- 
phitheatres, had beguiled them into applause of the 
Gidipus at Colonos. 

It would have been better for Miss Barrett if, 
throwing herself independently upon her own very 
extraordinary resources, and forgetting that a Greek 
had ever lived, she had involved her Eve in a series 
of adventures merely natural, or if not this, of adven- 
tures preternatural within the limits of at least a 
conceivable relation—a relation of matter to spirit 
and spirit to matter, that should have left room for 
something like palpable action and comprehensible 
emotion—that should not have utterly precluded the 
development of that womanly character which is ad- 
mitted as the principal object of the poem. As the © 
case actually stands, it is only in a few snatches of 
verbal intercommunication with Adam and Lucifer, 
that we behold her as a woman at all. For the rest, 
she is a mystical something or nothing, enwrapped in 
a fog of rhapsody about Transfiguration, and the 
seed, and the Bruising of the Heel, and other talk 
of a nature that no man ever pretended to un- 
derstand in plain prose, and which, when solar-mi- 
croscoped into poetry ‘‘upon the model of the Greek 
drama,” is about as convincing as the Egyptian 
Lectures of Mr. Silk Buckingham—about as much to 
any purpose under the sun as the hi presto! con- 
jurations of Signor Blitz. What are we to make, for 
example, of dramatic colloquy such as this?—the 
words are those of a Chorus of Invisible Angels ad- 
dressing Adam: 


ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT 261 


Live, work on, O Earthy! 
By the Actual’s tension 
Speed the arrow worthy 
Of a pure ascension. 
From the low earth round you 
Reach the heights above you; 
From the stripes that wound you 
Seek the loves that love you! 
God’s divinest burneth plain 
Through the crystal diaphane 
Of our Joves that love you, 


Now we do not mean to assert that, by excessive 
“tension ’”’ of the intellect, a reader accustomed to the 
cant of the transcendentalists (or of those who degrade 
an ennobling philosophy by styling themselves such) 
may not succeed in ferretting from the passage 
quoted, and indeed from each of the thousand simi- 
lar ones throughout the book, something that shall 
bear the aspect of an absolute idea—but we do 
mean to say, first, that in nine cases out of ten, 
the thought when dug out will be found very poorly 
to repay the labor of the digging;—for it is the 
nature of thought in general, as it is the nature of 
some ores in particular, to be richest when most 
superficial. And we do mean to say, secondly, that, 
in nineteen cases out of twenty, the reader will 
suffer the most valuable ore to remain unmined to all 
eternity, before he will be put to the trouble of digging 
for it one inch. And we do mean to assert, thirdly, 
that no reader is to be condemned for not putting 
himself to the trouble of digging even the one inch; 
for no writer has the right to impose any such 
necessity upon him. What is worth thinking is 
distinctly thought: what is distinctly thought, can 
and should be distinctly expressed, or should not be 
expressed at all. Nevertheless, there is no more 
appropriate opportunity than the present for admit- 


262 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


ting and maintaining, at once, what has never be- 


Sa ie tS ae te ; 


fore been either maintained or admitted—that there ~ 


is a justifiable exception to the rule for which we : 


. contend. It is where the design is to convey the 


fantastic—not the obscure. To give the idea of the 


latter we need, as in general, the most precise and ~ 


definitive terms, and those who employ other terms 


but confound obscurity of expression with the ex- © 


pression of obscurity. The fantastic in itself, how- — 
ever,—phantasm—may be materially furthered in ~ 


its development by the quaint in phraseology:—a 


proposition which any moralist may examine at his © 


leisure for himself. 

The ‘‘Drama of Exile” opens with a very palpable 
bull:—‘‘Scene, the outer side of the gate of Eden, 
shut fast with clouds’”—{a scene out of sight!]— 


“from the depth of which revolves the sword of — 
fire, self-moved. A watch of innumerable angels — 
rank above rank, slopes up from around it to the 


zenith; and the glare cast from their brightness and 
from the sword, extends many miles into the wilder- 
ness. Adam and Eve are seen in the distance, 


flying along the glare. The angel Gabriel and © 


Lucifer are beside the gate.’’—These are the ‘‘stage 
directions”? which greet us on the threshold of the 
book. We complain first of the bull: secondly, 
of the blue-fire melo-dramatic aspect of the revolving 
sword; thirdly, of the duplicate nature of the sword, 
which, if steel, and sufficiently inflamed to do service 
in burning, would, perhaps, have been in no temper 
to cut; and on the other hand, if sufficiently cool 
to have an edge, would have accomplished little in 
the way of scorching a personage so well accustomed 
to fire and brimstone and all that, as we have very 
good reason to believe Lucifer was. We cannot 
help objecting, too, to the ‘‘innumerable angels,” 


ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT 263 


as a force altogether disproportioned to the one 
enemy to be kept out: either the self-moving sword 
itself, we think, or the angel Gabriel alone, or five 
or six of the “‘innumerable” angels, would have 
sufficed to keep the devil (or is it Adam?) outside 
of the gate—which, after all, he might not have 
been able to discover, on account of the clouds. 

Far be it from us, however, to dwell irreverently 
on matters which have venerability in the faith or 
in the fancy of Miss Barrett. We allude to these 
nidtsertes at all—found here in the very first para- 
graph of her poem,—simply by way of putting in 
the clearest light the mass of inconsistency and 
antagonism in which her subject has inextricably 
involved her. She has made allusion to Milton, and 
no doubt felt secure in her theme (as a theme 
merely) when she considered his ‘‘Paradise Lost.’ 
But even in Milton’s own day, when men had the 
habit of believing all things, the more nonsensical 
the more readily, and of worshipping, in blind 
acquiescence, the most preposterous of impossibilities 
—even then, there were not wanting individuals 
who would have read the great epic with more zest, 
could it have been explained to their satisfaction, 
how and why it was, not only that a snake quoted 
Aristotle’s ethics, and behaved otherwise pretty 
much as he pleased, but that bloody battles were 
continually being fought between bloodless “‘innum- 
erable angels,’ that found no inconvenience in 
losing a wing one minute and a head the next, and 
if pounded up into puff-paste late in the afternoon, 
were as good ‘“‘innumerable angels’ as new the 
next morning, in time to be at revezllé roll-call: 
And now—at the present epoch—there are few 
people who do not oceasionally think. This is 
emphatically the thinking age;—indeed it may very 


264 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


well be questioned whether mankind ever sub- 
stantially thought before. The fact is, if the 
‘‘Paradise Lost”? were written to-day (assuming 
that it had never been written when it was,) not 
even its eminent, although over-estimated merits, 
would counterbalance, either in the public view, 
or in the opinion of any critic at once intelligent and 
honest, the multitudinous incongruities which are 
part and parcel of its plot. 

But in the plot of the drama of Miss Barrett it is 
something even worse than incongruity which af- 
ffronts:—a continuous mystical strain of ill-fitting 
and exaggerated allegory—if, indeed, allegory is not 
much too respectable a term for it. We are called 
upon, for example, to sympathise in the whimsical 
woes of two Spirits, who, upspringing from the 
bowels of the earth, set immediately to bewailing 
their miseries in jargon such as this: 


I am the spirit of the harmless earth; 
God spake me softly out among the stars, 
As softly as a blessing of much worth— 
And then his smile did follow unawares, 
That all things, fashioned, so, for use and duty, 
Might shine anointed with his chrism of beauty— 
Yet I wail! 
I drave on with the worlds exultingly, 
Obliquely down the Godlight’s gradual fali— 
Individual aspect and complexity 
Of gyratory orb and interval, 
Lost in the fluent motion of delight 
Toward the high ends of Being, beyond Sight— 
Yet I wail! 


Innumerable other spirits discourse successively 
after the same fashion, each ending every stanza 
of his lamentation with the ‘‘yet I wail!” When 
at length they have fairly made an end, Eve touches 
Adam upon the elbow, and hazards, also, the pro- 


ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT 26s 


found and pathetic observation—‘‘Lo, Adam, they 
wail!’’—which is nothing more than the simple 
truth—for they do—and God deliver us from any 
such wailing again! 

It is not our purpose, however, to demonstrate 
what every reader of these volumes will have 
readily seen self-demonstrated—the utter indefensi- 
bility of “‘The Drama of Exile,’’ considered uniquely, 
as a work of art. We have none of us to be told 
that a medley of metaphysical recitatives sung out 
of tune, at Adam and Eve, by all manner of incon- 
ceivable abstractions, is not exactly the best material 
for a poem. Still it may very well happen that 
among this material there shall be individual 
passages of great beauty. But should any one 
doubt the possibility, let him be satisfied by a single 
extract such as follows: 


On a mountain peak 
Half sheathed in primal woods and glittering 
In spasms of awful sunshine, at that hour 
A lion couched,—part raised upon his paws, 
With hts calm massive face turned full on thine, 
And his mane listening. When the ended curse 
Left silence in the world, right suddenly 
He sprang up rampant, and stood straight and stiff, 
As of the new reality of death 
Were dashed against his eyes,—and roared so fierce, 
(Such thick carnivorous passion tn his throat 
Tearing a passage through the wrath and fear)— 
And roared so wild, and smote from all the hills 
Such fast keen echoes crumbling down the vales 
To distant silence,—that the forest beasts, 
One after one, did mutter a response 
In savage and in sorrowful complaint 
Which tratled along the gorges. 


There is an Homeric force here—a vivid pictur. 
esqueness which all men will appreciate and admire. 


266 EDGAK ALLAN POE 


It is, however, the longest quotable passage in the 
drama, not disfigured with blemishes of importance; 
—although there are many—very many passages of 
a far loftier order of excellence, so disfigured, and 
which, therefore, it would not suit our immediate 
purpose to extract. The truth is,—and it may be 
as well mentioned at this point as elsewhere—that 
we are not to look in Miss Barrett’s works for any 
examples of what has been occasionally termed 
“‘sustained effort”; for neither are there, in any 
of her poems, any long commendable paragraphs, 
nor are there any individual compositions which 
will bear the slightest examination as consistent 
Art-products. Her wild and magnificent genius 
seems to have contented itself with points—to have 
exhausted itself in flashes;—but it is the profusion— 
the unparalled number and close propinquity of 
these points and flashes which render her book one 
flame, and justify us in calling her, unhesitatingly, 
the greatest—the most glorious of her sex. 

The ‘‘Drama of Exile” calls for little more, in 
the way of comment, than what we have generally 
said. Its finest particular feature is, perhaps, the 
rapture of Eve—rapture bursting through despair— 
upon discovering that she still possesses in the 
unwavering love of Adam, an undreamed-of and 
priceless treasure. The poem ends, as it commences, 
with a bull. The last sentence gives us to under- 
stand that ‘‘there is a sound through the silence, as 
of the falling tears of an angel.’’ How there can 
be sound during silence, and how an audience are to 
distinguish, by such sound, angel tears from any 
other species of tears, it may be as well, perhaps, 
not too particularly to inquire. 

Next, in length, to the Drama is, ‘‘The Vision of 
Poets.’’ We object to the didacticism of its design, 


ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT 267 


which the poetess thus states: ‘‘I have attempted 
to express here my view of the mission of the 
veritable poet—of the self-abnegation implied in it, 
of the uses of sorrow suffered in it, of the great work 
accomplished m it through suffering, and of the 
duty and glory of what Balzac has beautifully and 
truly called ‘la patience angelique du génie.’” This 
‘‘view’’ may be correct, but neither its correctness 
nor its falsity has anything to do with a poem. 
If a thesis is to be demonstrated, we need prose for 
its demonstration. In this instance, so far as the 
allegorical instruction and argumentation are lost 
sight of, in the upper current—so far as the main 
admitted intention of the work is kept out of view 
—so far only is the work a poem, and so far only 
is the poem worth notice, or worthy of its author. 
Apart from its poetical character, the composition 
is thoughtful, vivid, epigrammatic, and abundant 
in just observation—although the critical opinions 
introduced are not always our cwn. A reviewer 
in ‘‘Blackwood’s Magazine,”’ quoting many of these 
critical portraits, takes occasion to find fault with 
the grammar of this tristich: 


Here Aischylus—the women swooned 
To see so awful when he frowned 
As the God’s did—he standeth crowned. 


‘‘What on earth,” says the critic, “‘areé we to 
make of the words ‘the women swooned to see so 
awful’?....The syntax will punish future com- 
mentators as much as some of his own corrupt 
choruses.”’ In general, we are happy to agree with 
this reviewer, whose decisions respecting the book 
are, upon the whole, so nearly coincident with ours, 
that we hesitated, through fear of repetition, to 
undertake a critique at all, until we considered that 


268 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


we might say a very great deal in simply supplying 
his omissions; but he frequently errs through mere 
hurry, and never did he err more singularly than at 
the point now in question. He evidently supposes 
that ‘‘awful’’ has been misused as an adverb and 
made referable to ‘‘women.” But not so; and 
although the construction of the passage is unjusti- 
fiably involute, its grammar is intact. Disen- 
tangling the construction, we make this evident at 
once: “‘Here Atschylus (he) standeth crowned, 
(whom) the women swooned to see so awful, when 
he frowned as the God’s did.” The “‘he”’ is excess- 
ive, and the ‘‘whom” is understood. Respecting 
the lines, 

Euripides, with close and mild 

Scholastic lips, that could be wild, 


And laugh or sob out like a child 
Right in the classes, 


the critic observes:—‘‘ ‘Right in the classes’ throws 
our intellect completely upon its beam-ends.”’ 
But, if so, the fault possibly lies in the crankness of 
the intellect; for the words themselves mean merely 
that Sophocles laughed or cried like a school-boy— 
like a child right (or just) in his classes—one who 
had not yet left school. The phrase is affected, we 
grant, but quite intelligible. A still more remark- 
able misapprehension occurs in regard to the triplet, 


And Goethe, with that reaching eye 
His soul reached out from, far and high, 
And fell from inner entity. 


The reviewer’s remarks upon this are too preposter- 
ous not to be quoted in full;—we doubt if any com- 
mentator of equal dignity ever so egregiously com- 
mitted himself before. ‘‘Goethe,”’ he says, “‘is a per- 
fect enigma, what does the word ‘fell’ mean? devs we 


ELIZABETH BARRETT BRARETT 269 


suppose—that is, ‘not to be trifled with.’ But 
surely it sounds very strange, although it may be 
true enough, to say that his ‘fellness’ is occasioned 
by ‘inner entity.” But perhaps the line has some 
deeper meaning which we are unable to fathom.”’ 
Perhaps it has: and this is the criticism—the Brit- 
ish criticism—the Blackwood criticism—to which 
we have so long implicitly bowed down! As before, 
Miss Barrett’s verses are needlessly involved, but 
their meaning requires no Edipus. Their construc- 
tion is thus intended:—‘‘And Goethe, with that 
reaching eye from which his soul reached out, far and 
high, and (in so reaching) fell from inner entity.” 
The plain prose is this:—Goethe, (the poet would 
say,) in involving himself too far and too profoundly 
in external speculations—speculations concerning 
the world without him—neglected, or made miscal- 
culations concerning his inner entity, or being,— 
concerning the world within. This idea is involved 
in the metaphor of a person leaning from a window 
so far that finally he falls from it—the person being 
the soul, the window the eye. 

Of the twenty-eight ‘‘Sonnets,” which immedi- 
ately succeed the ‘‘Drama of Exile,’’ and which re- 
ceive the especial commendation of Blackwood, 
we have no very enthusiastic opinion. The best 
sonnet is objectionable from its extreme artificiality ; 
and, to be effective, this species of composition re- 
quires a minute management—a _ well-controlled 
dexterity of touch—compatible neither with Miss 
Barrett’s deficient constructiveness, nor with the 
fervid rush and whirl of her genius. Of the particu- 
lar instances here given, we prefer ‘‘the Prisoner,”’ 
of which the conclusion is particularly beautiful. 
In general, the themes are obtrusively metaphysical, 
or didactic. 


240 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


‘“The Romaunt of the Page,” an imitation of the 
old English ballad, is neither very original in sub- 
ject, nor very skilfully put together. We speak 
comparatively, of course:—It is not very good— 
for Miss Barrett:—and what we have said of this 
poem will apply equally to a very similar production, 
‘‘The Rnyme of the Dutchess May.”’ The ‘Poet 
and the Bird’”—‘‘A Child Asleep’”—‘‘Crowned and 
Wedded’”’—‘‘Crowned and Buried”—‘‘To Flush 
my Dog’’—‘‘The Foor-fold Aspect’”—‘‘A Flower in 
a Letter’—‘“A Lay of the Early Rose’”—'‘That 
Day’”—‘‘L. E. L.’s Questio”—‘‘Catarina to Camo- 
ens’—‘‘Wine of Cyprus’—‘‘The Dead Pan”— 
“Sleeping and Watching’”—‘‘A Portrait’’—‘‘The 
Mournful Mother”’—and ‘‘A Valediction’’—although 
all burning with divine fire, manifested only in scin- 
tillations, have nothing in them idiosyncratic. 
““The House of Clouds” and ‘‘The Last Bower” are 
superlatively lovely, and show the vast powers of 
the poet in the field best adapted to their legitimate 
display:—the themes, here, could not be improved. 
The former poem is purely imaginative; the latter is 
unobjectionably because unobtrusively suggestive 
of a moral, and is, perhaps, upon the whole, the 
most admirable composition in the two volumes :— 
or, if it is not, then “‘The Lay of the Brown Rosarie”’ 
7s. In this last the ballad-character is elevated— 
etherealized—and thus made to afford scope for an 
ideality at once the richest and most vigorous in the 
world. ‘The peculiar foibles of the author are here 
too, dropped bodily, as a mantle, in the tumultuous 
movement and excitement of the narrative. 

Miss Barrett has need only of real self-interest 
in her subjects, to do justice to her subjects and to 
herself. On the other hand, ‘‘A Rhapsody of Life’s 
Progress,” although gleaming with cold corrusca- 


ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT 271 


tions, is the least meritorious, because the most 
philosophical, effusion of the whole:—this, we say, 
in flat contradiction of the ‘‘spoudiotaton kat philo- 
sophikotaton genos”’ of Aristotle. ‘‘The Cry of the 
Human” is singularly effective, not more from 
the vigor and ghastly passion of its thought, than 
from the artistically-conceived arabesquerie of its 
rhythm. “‘The Cry of the Children,’ similar, 
although superior in tone and handling, is full of a 
nervous unflinching energy—a horror sublime in 
its simplicity—of which a far greater than Dante 
might have been proud. ‘“‘Bertha in the Lane,” 
a rich ballad, very singularly excepted from the 
wholesale commendation of the‘! Democratic Re- 
view,’’ as “‘perhaps not one of the best,” and 
designated by Blackwood, on the contrary, as 
““decidedly the finest poem of the collection,” is not 
the very best, we think, only because mere pathcs, 
however exquisite, cannot be ranked with the loftiest 
exhibitions of the ideal. Of ‘‘Lady Geraldine’s 
Courtship,” the magazine last quoted observes 
that ‘‘some pith is put forth in its passionate parts.” 
We will not pause to examine the delicacy or 
lucidity of the metaphor embraced in the “‘ putting 
forth of some pith”; but unless by “‘some pith” 
itself, is intended the utmost conceivable intensity 
and vigor, then the critic is merely damning with 
faint praise. With the exception of Tennyson’s 
‘‘Locksley Hall,’ we have never perused a poem 
combining so much of the fiercest passion with so 
much of the most ethereal fancy, as the ‘‘Lady 
Geraldine’s Courtship,” of Miss Barrett. We are 
forced to admit, however, that the latter work zs 
a very palpable imitation of the former, which it 
surpasses in plot, or rather in thesis, as much as it 
falls below it in artistical management, and a certain 


272 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


calm energy—lustrous and indomitable—such as 
we might imagine in a broad river of molten gold. 

It is in the ‘‘Lady Geraldine” that the critic of 
‘Blackwood is again put at fault in the comprehension 
of a couple of passages. He confesses his inability 
‘‘to make out the construction of the words, ‘all 
that spirits pure and ardent are cast out of love and 
reverence, because chancing not to hold.’” There 
are comparatively few American school-boys who 
could not parse it. The prosaic construction would 
run thus:—all that (wealth understood) because 
chancing not to hold which, (or on account of not 
holding which) all pure and ardent spirits are cast 
out of love and reverence.’’ The ‘“‘which’’ is 
involved in the relative pronoun ‘‘that’’—the second 
word of the sentence. All that we know ts, that Miss 
Barrett 1s right:—here is a parallel phrase, meaning— 
‘fall that (which) we know,” etc. The fact is, that 
the accusation of imperfect grammar would have 
been more safely, if more generally, urged: in 
descending to particular exceptions, the reviewer 
has been doing little more than exposing himself 
at all points. 

Turning aside, however, from grammar, he declares 
his incapacity to fathom the meaning of 


She has halls and she has castles, and the resonant 
steam-eagles 
Follow far on the dtrecting of her floating dove- 
like hand— 
With a thunderous vapor trailing underneath the 
starry vigils, 
So to mark upon the blasted heaven the measure 
of her land. 


Now it must be understood that he is profoundly 
serious in his declaration—he really does not appre- 
hend the thought designed—and he is even more 


ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT 273 


than profoundly serious, too, in intending these 
his own comments upon his own stolidity, for wit :— 
‘“We thought that steam-coaches generally followed 
the directing of no hand except the stoker’s, but 
at, certainly, is always much lzker a raven than a 
dove.” After this, who shall question the infalli- 
bility of Christopher North? We presume there 
are very few of our readers who will not easily 
appreciate the richly imaginative conception of the 
poetess:—The Lady Geraldine is supposed to be 
standing in her own door, (positively not on the top 
of an engine,) and thence pointing, ‘‘with her 
ficating dove-like hand,” to the lines of vapor, from 
the ‘“‘resonant steam-eagles,’’ that designate upon 
the ‘‘blasted heaven,” the remote boundaries of her 
domain.—But, perhaps, we are guilty of a very 
gross absurdity ourselves, in commenting at all 
upon the whimsicalities of a reviewer who can 
deliberately select for special animadversion the 
second of the four verses we here copy: 


Eyes, he said, now throbbing through me! are ye 
eyes that did undo me? 

Shining eyes like antique jewels set in Parian statue- 
stone! 

Underneath that calm white forehead are ye ever 
burning torrid 

O’er the desolate sand desert of my heart and life 
undone? 


The ghost of the Great Frederick might, to be 
sure, quote at us, in his own Latin, his favorite 
adage, ‘‘De gustibus non est disputandus” ;—but, 
when we take into consideration the moral designed, 
the weirdness of effect intended, and the historical 
adaptation of the fact alluded to, in the line itali- 
cized, (a fact of which it is by no means impossible 

VoL. VI—18 


274 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


that the critic is ignorant), we cannot refrain from 
expressing our conviction—and we here express it 
in the teeth of the whole horde of the Ambrosianians 
' —that from the entire range of poetical literature 
there shall not, in a century, be produced a more 
sonorous—a more vigorous verse—a juster—a nobler 
—a more ideal—a more magnificent image—than 
this very image, in this very verse, which the most 
noted magazine of Europe has so especially and so 
contemptuously condemned. 

‘‘The Lady Geraldine” is, we think, the only 
poem of its author which is not deficient, considered 
as an artistical whole. Her constructive ability, 
as we have already suggested, is either not very 


a we 


Sere 


remarkable, or has never been properly brought : 


into play:—in truth, her genius is too impetuous 
for the minuter technicalities of that elaborate Art 


so needful in the building up of pyramids for im- | 


mortality. This deficiency, then—if there be any 
such—is her chief weakness. Her other foibles, 
although some of them are, in fact, glaring, glare, 
nevertheless, to no very material ill purpose. ‘There 
are none which she will not readily dismiss in her 
future works. She retains them now, perhaps, 
because unaware of their existence. 

Her affections are unquestionably many, and 
generally inexcusable. We may, perhaps, tolerate 
such words as ‘“‘blé,’”’ ‘“‘chrysm,’’ ‘‘nympholeptic,” 
‘‘cenomel,’”’ and “‘chrysopras’’—they have at least 
the merit either of distinct meaning, or of terse and 
sonorous expression;—but what can be well said 
in defence of the unnecessary nonsense of ‘‘’ware”’ 
for ‘‘aware’”—of ‘‘’bide,’’ for ‘‘abide”—of ‘‘’gins,”’ 
for “‘begins’”—of ‘‘’las” for ‘‘alas’—of ‘‘oftly,” 
“‘ofter,’”’ and ‘‘oftest,” for ‘‘often,’? ‘‘more often,” 
and ‘‘most often”—or of ‘‘erelong”’ in the sense of 


ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT 24s 


“Jong ago”? That there is authority for the 1uere 
words proves nothing; those who employed them 
in their day would not employ them if writing now. 
Although we grant, too, that the poetess is very 
usually Homeric in her compounds, there is no 
intelligibility of construction, and therefore no 
force of meaning in “‘dew-pallid,”’ ‘‘pale-passioned,”’ 
and “‘silver-solemn.”’ Neither have we any par- 
tiality for ‘‘drave’”’ or ‘‘supreme,” or ‘‘lament;’’ 
and while upon this topic, we may as well observe 
that there are few readers who do anything but 
laugh or stare, at such phrases as ‘‘L. E. L.’s Last 
Questio”—‘‘The Cry of the Human’”—‘‘Leaning 
from my Human’’—‘‘Heaven assist the human” 
—‘‘the full sense of your mortal’—‘‘a grave for 
your divine’—‘‘falling off from our created’’— 
“‘he sends this gage for thy pity’s counting’’—‘‘they 
could not press their futures on the present of her 
courtesy’’—or “‘could another fairer lack to thee, 
lack to thee?’”’? There are few, at the same time, 
who do not feel disposed to weep outright,. when 
they hear of such things as ‘‘Hope withdrawing her 
peradventure’’—‘“‘spirits dealing in pathos of anti- 
thesis’”’—‘‘angels in antagonism to God and his 
reflex beatitudes”—‘‘songs of glories ruffling down 
doorways’ —‘‘God’s possibles’—and “rules of 
Mandom.” 

We have already said, however, that mere quaznt- 
ness within reasonable limit, is not only not to be 
regarded as affectation, but has its proper artistic 
uses in aiding a fantastic effect. We quote, from 
the lines ‘‘To my dog Flush,” a passage in exempli- 
fication: 

Leap! thy broad tail waves a light] 


Leap! thy slender feet are bright, 
Canopied in fringes! 


276 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Leap! those tasselled ears of thine 
Flicker strangely, fair and fine, 
Down their golden inches! 


And again—from the song of a tree-spirit, in the 
“*Drama of Exile:” 


The Divine impulsion cleaves 

In dim movements to the leaves 
Dropt and lifted, dropt and lifted, 
In the sun-light greenly sifted,— 
In the sun-light and the moon-light 
Greenly sifted through the trees. 
Ever wave the Eden trees, 

In the night-light and the noon-ligh, 
With a ruffling of green branches, 
Shaded off to resonances, 

Never stirred by rain or breeze. 


The thoughts, here, belong to the highest order 
of poetry, but they could not have been wrought 
into effective expression, without the instrumentality 
of those repetitions—those unusual phrases—in a 
word, those quaininesses, which it has been too long 
the fashion to censure, indiscriminately, under the 
one general head of ‘‘affectation.” No true poet 
will fail to be enraptured with the two extracts 
above quoted—but we believe there are few who 
would not find a difficulty in reconciling the psychal 
impossibility of refraining from admiration, with 
the too-hastily attained mental conviction that, 
critically, there is nothing to admire. 

Occasionally, we meet in Miss Barrett’s poems 
a certain farfetchedness of imagery, which is repre- 
hensible in the extreme. What, for example, are 
we to think of 


Now he hears the angel voices 
Folding silence in the room?— 


ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT 277 


undoubtedly, that it is nonsense, and no more; or of 


How the silence round you shivers 
While our voices through it go?r— 


again, unquestionably, that it is nonsense, and 
nothing beyond. 

Sometimes we are startled by knotty paradoxes; 
and it is not acquitting their perpetrator of all blame 
on their account to admit that, in some instances, 
they are susceptible of solution. It is really difficult 
to discover anything for approbation, in enigmas 
such as 


That bright impassive, passive angel-hood, 
0) Oma 
The silence of my heart is full of sound. 


At long intervals, we are annoyed by specimens 
of repulsive imagery, as where the children cry; 
How long, O cruel nation, 


Will you stand, to move the world, on a child’s heart— 
Stifle down with a matled heel tts palpitation? etc. 


Now and then, too, we are confounded by a pure 
platitude, as when Eve exclaims: 


Leave us not 
In agony beyond what we can bear, 
And in abasement below thunder-mark/ 


or, when the Savior is made to say: 


90, at last, 
He shall look round on you with lids too straight 
To hold the grateful tears. 


‘Strait’? was, no doubt, intended, but does not 
materially elevate, although it slightly elucidates, 
the thought. A very remarkable passage is that, 
also, wherein Eve bids the infant voices 


278 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Hear the steep generations, how they fall 
Adown the visionary stairs of Time, 

Like supernatural thunders—far yet near, 
Sowing their fiery echoes through the hills! 


t= eee 


Here, saying nothing of the affectation in © 


‘‘adown”’; not alluding to the insoluble paradox 


of ‘‘far yet near”; not mentioning the inconsistent — 
metaphor involved in the “‘sowing of fiery echoes”; — 
adverting but slightly to the misusage of ‘“‘like,” — 
in place of ‘‘as,’’ and to the impropriety of making ~ 
any thing fall like thunder, which has never been ~ 


known to fall at all; merely hinting, too, at the 
misapplication of ‘‘steep,”’ to the ‘‘generations,” 
instead of to the ‘‘stairs’’—a perversion in no degree 


to be justified by the fact that so preposterous a ~ 
figure as synecdoche exists in the school books;— ~ 


letting these things pass, for the present, we shail 


still find it difficult to understand how Miss Barrett | 


should have been led to think that the principal 
idea itselfi—the abstract idea—the idea of tumbling 
down statrs, in any shape, or under any circumstances 
—either a poetical or a decorous conception. And 
yet we have seen this very passage quoted as “‘sub- 
lime,” by a critic who seems to take it for granted, 
as a general rule, that Nat-Leeism is the loftiest 
order of literary merit. That the lines very xar- 
rowly missed sublimity, we grant; that they came 


1 


within a step of it, we admit;—but, unhappily, the © 


step is that one step which, time out of mind, has 
intervened between the sublime and the ridiculous. 
So true is this, that any person—that even we— 
with a very partial modification of the imagery— 
a modification that shall not interfere with its 
richly spiritual tone—may elevate the quotation 
into unexceptionability. For example: and we 
offer it with profound deference— 


ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT 279 


Hear the far generations—how they crash, 
From crag to crag, down the precipitous Time, 
In multitudinous thunders that upstartle, 
Aghast, the echoes from their cavernous lairs 
In the visionary hills! 


We have no doubt that our version has its faults 
—but it has, at least, the merit of consistency. © 
Not only is a mountain more poetical than a pair 
of stairs; but echoes are more appropriately typified 
as wild beasts than as seeds; and echoes and wild 
beasts agree better with a mountain, than does a 
pair of stairs with the sowing of seeds—even admit- 
ting that these seeds be seeds of fire, and be sown 
broadcast ‘‘among the hills,”’ by a steep generation, 
while in the act of tumbling down the stairs—that 
is to say, of coming down the stairs—in too violent 
a hurry to be capable of sowing the seeds as 
accurately as all seeds should be sown; nor is the 
matter rendered any better for Miss Barrett, even 
if the construction of her sentence is to be under- 
stood as implying that the fiery seeds were sown, 
not immediately by the steep generations that 
tumbled down the stairs, but mediately, through 
the intervention of the ‘“‘supernatural thunders” 
that were occasioned by the ‘‘steep generations”’ 
that tumbled down the stairs. 

The poetess is not unfrequently guilty of repeating 
herself. The ‘‘thunder cloud veined by lightning’”’ 
appears, for instance, on pages 34 of the first, and 
228 of the second volume. The ‘‘silver clash of 
wings” is heard at pages 53 of the first, and 269 
of the second; and angel tears are discovered to be 
falling as well at page 27, as at the conclusion of 
“‘The Drama of Exile.’”’ Steam, too, in the shape 
of Death’s White Horse, comes upon the ground, 
both at page 244 of the first, and 179 of the second 


280 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


volume—and there are multitudinous other repeti- 
tions, both of phrase and idea—but it is the excessive 
reiteration of pet words which is, perhaps, the most 
obtrusive of the minor errorsof the poet. ‘‘Chrys- 
talline,’ ‘‘Apocalypse,’’ ‘‘foregone,’”’ ‘‘evangel,” 
‘ware,’ ‘throb,’ ‘‘level,” ‘‘loss,”’ and the musical 
term ‘‘minor,”’ are forever upon her lips. The 
chief favorites, however, are ‘‘down” and “‘lean- 
ing,’’ which are echoed and re-echoed not only ad 
infinitum, but in every whimsical variation of import. 
As Miss Barrett certainly cannot be aware of the 
extent of this mannerism, we will venture to call 
her attention to a few—comparatively a very few 
examples. 


Pealing down the depths of Godhead... . 

Smiling down, as Venus down the waves. ... 
Smiling down the steep world very purely. ... 
Down the purple of this chamber... . 

Moving down the hidden depths of loving... . 
Cold the sun shines down the door... . 

Which brought angels down our talk. ... 

Let your souls behind you lean gently moved. ... 
But angels leaning from the golden seats. ... 
And melancholy leaning out of heaven. ... 

And I know the heavens are leaning down. ... 
Then over the casement she leaneth. ... 

Forbear that dream, too near to heaven it leaned. . . 
I would lean my spirit o’er you. ... 

Thou, O sapient angel, leanest o'er... . 

Shapes of brightness overlean thee. ... 

They are leaning their young heads. ... 

Out of heaven shall o’er you lean. ... 

While my spirit leans and reaches. ... 

CUCy etc, etc. 


In the matter of grammar, upon which the Edin- 
burgh critic insists so pertinaciously, the author 
of ‘‘The Drama of Exile” seems to us even peculiarly 
without fault. The nature of her studies has, no 


ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT 281 


doubt, imbued her with a very delicate instinct of 
constructive accuracy. The occasional use of 
phrases so questionable as ‘‘from whence” and the 
far-fetchedness and involution of which we have 
already spoken, are the only noticeable blemishes 
of an exceedingly chaste, vigorous, and compre- 
hensive style. 

In her inattention to rhythm, Mrs. Barrett is 
guilty of an error that might have been fatal to her 
fame—that would have been fatal to any reputation 
less solidly founded than her own. We do not 
allude, so particularly, to her multiplicity of inad- 
missible rhymes. We would wish, to be sure, that 
she had not thought proper to couple Eden and 
succeeding—glories and floorwise—burning and 
morning—thither and ether—enclose me and 
across me—misdoers and flowers—centre and 
winter—guerdon and pardon—conquer and anchor 
—desert and unmeasured—atoms and fathoms— 
opal and people—glory and doorway—trumpet 
and accompted—taming and overcame him— 
coming and woman—is and trees—off and sun- 
proof—eagles and vigils—nature and _  satire— 
poems and interflowings—certes and virtues—par- 
don and burden—thereat and great—children and 
bewildering—mortal and turtle—moonshine and 
sunshine. It would have been better, we say, if 
such apologies for rhymes as these had been rejected. 
But deficiencies of rhythm are more serious. In 
some cases it is nearly impossible to determine what 
metre is intended. ‘‘The Cry of the Children”’ can- 
not be scanned: we never saw so poor a specimen of 
verse. In imitating the rhythm of ‘‘Locksley 
Hall,” the poetess has preserved with accuracy (so 
far as mere syllables are concerned) the forcible 
line of seven trochees with a final cesura. The 


282 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


‘*double rhymes” have only the force of a single 
long syllable—a cesura; but the natural rhythmical 
division, occurring at the close of the fourth trochee, 
should never be forced to occur, as Miss Barrett 
constantly forces it, in the middle of a word, or of 
an indivisible phrase. If it do so occur, we must 
sacrifice, in perusal, either the sense or the rhythm. 
If she will consider, too, that this line of seven 
trochees and a cesura, is nothing more than two 
lines written in one—a line of four trochees, 
succeeded by one of three trochees and a cesura— 
she will at once see how unwise she has been in 
composing her poem in quatrains of the long line 
with alternate rhymes, instead of immediate ones, 
as in the case of ‘‘Locksley Hall.’”’ The result is, that 
the ear, expecting the rhymes before they occur, does 
not appreciate them when they do. These points, 
however, will be best exemplified by transcribing one 
of the quatrains in its natural arrangement. That 
actually employed is addressed only to the eye. 


Oh, she fluttered like a tame bird 
In among its forest brothers 
Far too strong for it, then, drooping, 
Bowed her face upon her hands— 
And I spake out wildly, fiercely, 
Brutal truths of her and others! 
I, she planted in the desert, 
Swathed her ’wind-like, with my sands. 


Here it will be seen that there is a paucity of 
thyme, and that it is expected at closes where it 
does not occur. In fact, if we consider the eight 
lines as two independent quatrains, (which they are,) 
then we find them entirely rhymeless. Now so 
unhappy are these metrical defects—of so much 
importance do we take them to be, that we do not 
hesitate in declaring the general inferiority of the 


ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT 283 


poem to its prototype to be altogether chargeable 
to them. With equal rhythm ‘‘Lady Geraldine” 
had been far—very far the superior poem. Ineffi- 
cient poetical expression; and expression, in poetry, 
—what is it?--what is it not? No one living can 
better answer these queries than Miss Barrett. 

We conclude our comments upon her versification, 
by quoting (we will not say whence—from what 
one of her poems)—a few verses without the linear 
division as it appears in the book. There are many 
readers who would never suspect the passage to 
be intended for metre at all.—‘‘Ay!—and some- 
times, on the hillside, while we sat down on the 
gowans, with the forest green behind us, and its 
shadow cast before, and the river running under, 
and, across it from the rowens a partridge whirring 
near us till we felt the air it bore—there, obedient 
to her praying, did I read aloud the poems made 
by Tuscan flutes, or instruments more various of 
our own—read the pastoral parts of Spencer—or 
the subtle interflowings found in Petrarch’s sonnets; 
—here’s the book!—the leaf is folded down!” 

With this extract we make an end of our fault- 
finding—and now, shall we speak, equally in detail, 
of the beauties of this book? Alas! here, indeed, 
do we feel the impotence of the pen. We have 
already said that the supreme excellence of the 
poetess whose works we review, is made up of the 
multitudinous sums of a world of lofty merits. 
It is the multiplicity—it is the aggregatton—which 
excites our most profound enthusiasm, and enforces 
our most earnest respect. But unless we had space 
to extract three-fourths of the volumes, how could 
we convey this aggregation by specimens? We 
might quote, to be sure, an example of keen insight 
into our psychal nature, such as this: 


284 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


T fell flooded with a Dark, 
In the silence of a swoon— 
When I rose, still cold and stark, 
There was night,—I saw the moon; 
And the stars, each in its place, 
And the May-blooms on the grass, 
Seemed to wonder what I was. 
And I walked as if apart 
From myself when I could stand— 
And I pitied my own heart, 
As if I held it in my hand 
Somewhat coldly,— with a sense 
Of fulfilled benevolence. 


Or we might copy an instance of the purest and 
most radiant imagination, such as this: 
So, young muser, I sat listening 
To my Fancy’s wildest word— 
On a sudden, through the glistening 
Leaves around, a little stirred, 
Came a sound, a sense of music, which was rather felt than 
heard. 
Softly, finely, it inwound me— 
From the world it shut me in— 
Like a fountain falling round me 
Which with silver waters thin, 
Holds a little marble Naiad sitting smilingly within. 
Or, again, we might extract a specimen of wild 
Dantesque vigor, such as this—in combination 
with a pathos never excelled: 
Ay! be silent—let them hear each other breathing 
For a moment, mouth to mouth— 
Let them touch each others’ hands in a fresh wreathing 
Of their tender human youth! 
Let them feel that this cold metallic motion 
Is not all the life God fashions or reveals— 
Let them prove their inward souls against the notion 
That they live in you, or under you, O wheels! 


Or, still again, we might give a passage embodying 
the most elevated sentiment, most tersely and 
musically thus expressed: 


ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT 28s 


And since, Prince Albert, men have called thy spirit high 
and rare, 

And true to truth, and brave for truth, as some at Augsburg 
were— 

We charge thee by thy lofty thoughts and by thy poet-mind, 

Which not by glory or degree takes measure of mankind, 

Esteem that wedded hand less dear for sceptre than for ring, 

And hold her uncrowned womanhood to be the royal thing! 


These passages, we say, and a hundred similar 
ones, exemplifying particular excellences, might 
be displayed, and we should still fail, as lamentably 
as the skolasttkos with his brick, in conveying an 
idea of the vast totality. By no individual stars 
can we present the constellatory radiance of the 
book. To the book then, with implicit confidence 
we appeal. 

That Miss Barrett has done more, in poetry, than 
any woman living or dead, will scarcely be ques- 
tioned:—that she has surpassed all her poetical 
contemporaries of either sex (with a single excep- 
tion,) is our deliberate opinion—not idly entertained, 
we think, nor founded on any visionary basis. It 
may not be uninteresting, therefore, in closing this 
examination of her claims, to determine in what 
manner she holds poetical relation with these 
contemporaries, or with her immediate predecessors, 
and especially with the great exception to which 
we have alluded,—if at all. 

If ever mortal ‘“‘wreaked his thoughts upon 
expression,” it was Shelley. If ever poet sang 
(as a bird sings)—impulsively—earnestly—with 
utter abandonment—to himself solely—and for the 
mere joy of his own song—that poet was the author 
of the Sensitive Plant. Of Art—beyond that which 
is the inalienable instinct of Genius—he either had 
little or disdained all. He really disdained that 
Rule which is the emanation from Law, because his 


286 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


own soul was law in itself. His rhapsodies are but 
the rough notes—the stenographic memoranda of 
poems—memoranda which, because they were all- 
sufficient for his own intelligence, he cared not to 
be at the trouble of transcribing in full for mankind. 
In his whole life he wrought not thoroughly out a 
single conception. For this reason it is that he is 
the most fatiguing of poets. Yet he wearies in 
having done too little, rather than too much; what 
seems in him the diffuseness of one idea, is the 
conglomerate concision of many;—and this concision 
it is which renders him obscure. With such a man, 
to imitate was out of the question; it would have 
answered no purpose—for he spoke to his own 
spirit alone, which would have comprehended no 
alien tongue;—he was, therefore, profoundly 
original. His quaintness arose from intuitive per- 
ception of that truth to which Lord Verulam alone 
has given distinct voice:—‘‘There is no exquisite 
beauty which has not some strangeness in its 
proportion.” But whether obscure, original, or 
quaint, he was at all times sincere. He had no 
affectations. 

From the ruins of Shelley there sprang into 
existence, affronting the Heavens, a tottering and 
fantastic pagoda, in which the salient angles, tipped 
with mad jangling bells, were the idiosyncratic 
faults of the great original—faults which cannot 
be called such in view of his purposes, but which 
are monstrous when we regard his works as addressed 
to mankind. A ‘‘school” arose—if that absurd 
term must still be employed—a school—a system 
of rules—upon the basis of the Shelley who had 
none. Young men innumerable, dazzled with the 
glare and bewildered with the bizarrerie of the divine 
lightning that flickered through the clouds of the 


ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT 287 


Prometheus, had no trouble whatever in heaping 
up imitative vapors, but, for the lightning, were 
content, perforce, with its spectrum, in which the 
bizarrerieé appeared without the fire. Nor were 
great and mature minds unimpressed by the con- 
templation of a greater and more mature; and thus 
gradually were interwoven into this school of all 
Lawlessness—of obscurity, quaintness, exaggeration 
—the misplaced didacticism of Wordsworth, and 
the even more preposterously anomalous metaphy- 
sicianism of Coleridge. Matters were now fast 
verging to their worst, and at length, in Tennyson, 
poetic inconsistency attained its extreme. But 
it was precisely this extreme (for the greatest error 
and the greatest truth are scarcely two points in a 
circle)—it was this extreme which, following the 
law of all extremes, wrought in him—in Tennyson 
—a natural and inevitable revulsion, leading him 
first to contemn and secondly to investigate his 
early manner, and, finally, to winnow from its 
magnificent elements the truest and purest of all 
poetical styles. But not even yet is the process 
complete; and for this reason in part, but chiefly 
on account of the mere fortuitousness of that 
mental and moral combination which shall unite 
in one person (if ever it shall) the Shelleyan abandon, 
the Tennysonian poetic sense, the most profound 
instinct of Art, and the sternest Will properly to 
blend and vigorously to control all;—chiefly, we 
say, because such combination of antagonisms 
must be purely fortuitous, has the world never yet 
seen the noblest of the poems of which it is posszble 
that it may be put in possession. 

And yet Miss Barrett has narrowly missed the 
fulfilment of these conditions. Her poetic inspira- 
tion is the highest—we can conceive nothing more 


288 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


august. Her sense of Art is pure in itself, but has 
been contaminated by pedantic study of false 
models—a study which has the more easily led her 
astray, because she placed an undue value upon it 
as rare—as alien to her character of woman. The 
accident of having been long secluded by ill health 
from the world has affected, moreover, in her 
behalf, what an innate recklessness did for Shelley— 
has imparted to her, if not precisely that abandon 
to which I have referred, at least a something that 
stands well in its stead—a comparative indepen- 
dence of men and opinions with which she did not 
come personally in contact—a happy audacity of 
thought and expression never before known in one 
of her sex. It is, however, this same accident of 
ill health, perhaps, which has invalidated her 
original Will—diverted her from proper individuality 
of purpose—and seduced her into the sin of imitation. 
Thus, what she might have done, we cannot alto- 
gether determine. What she has actually accom- 
plished is before us. With Tennyson’s works 
beside her, and a keen appreciation of them in her 
soul—appreciation too keen to be discriminative ;— 
with an imagination even more vigorous than his, 
although somewhat less ethereally delicate; with 
inferior art and more feeble volition; she has written 
poems such as he could not write, but such as he, 
under her conditions of ill health and seclusion, 
would have written during the epoch of his pupildom 
in that school which arose out of Shelley, and from 
which, over a disgustful gulf of utter incongruity 
and absurdity, lit only by miasmatic flashes, into 
the broad open meadows of Natural Art and Divine 
Genius, he—Tennyson—is at once the bridge and 
the transition. 


R. H. HORNE 289 


au ta twit OR NE 


ROR He HORNE) ‘the’ author ‘ofthe 
M “Orion,” has, of late years, acquired 
a high and extensive home reputation, 

although, as yet, he is only partially known in 
America. He will be remembered, however, as 
the author of a very well-written Introduction to 
Black’s Translation of Schlegel’s ‘‘Lectures on 
Dramatic Art and Literature,” and as a contributor 
with Wordsworth, Hunt, Miss Barrett, and others, 
to ‘‘Chaucer Modernized.’ He is the author, also, 
of ‘‘Cosmo de Medici,” of ‘‘The Death of Marlowe,” 
and, especially, of “‘Gregory the Seventh,” a fine 
tragedy, prefaced with an ‘“‘Essay on Tragic 
Influence.” ‘‘Orion” was originally advertised to 
be sold for a farthing; and, at this price, three large 
editions were actually sold. The fourth edition 
(a specimen of which now lies before us) was issued 
at a shilling, and also sold. A fifth is promised at 
half a crown; this likewise, with even a sixth at a 
crown, may be disposed of—partly through the 
intrinsic merit of the work itself—but chiefly 
through the ingenious novelty of the original price. 
We have been among the earliest readers of Mr. 
Horne—among the most earnest admirers of his 
high genius;—for a man of high, of the highest 
genius, he unquestionably is. With an eager wish 
to do justice to his ‘‘Gregory the Seventh,” we have 
never yet found exactly that opportunity we desired. 


* Orion: an Epic Poem in Three Books. By R. H. Horne, 
Fourth Edition. London: Published by J. Miller, 


VoL. VI—z¢ 


290 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Meantime, we looked, with curiosity, for what the 
British critics would say of a work which, in the 
boldness of its conception, and in the fresh origi- 
‘nality of its management, would necessarily fall 
beyond the routine of their customary verbiage. 
We saw nothing, however, that either could or 
should be understood—nothing, certainly, that 
was worth understanding. The tragedy itself was, 
unhappily, not devoid of the ruling cant of the day, 
and its critics (that cant incarnate) took their cue 
from some of its infected passages, and proceeded 
forthwith to rhapsody and esthetics, by way of 
giving a common-sense public an intelligible idea 
of the book. By the ‘‘cant of the day’”’ we mean 
the disgusting practice of putting on the airs of an 
owl, and endeavoring to look miraculously wise; 
—the affectation of second sight—of a species of 
ecstatic prescience—of an intensely bathetic pene- | 
tration into all sorts of mysteries, psychological 
ones in especial ;—an Orphic—an ostrich affectation, 
which buries its head in balderdash, and, seeing 
nothing itself, fancies, therefore, that its preposterous 
carcass is not a visible object of derision for the 
world at large. 

Of “‘Orion”’ itself, we have, as yet, seen few 
notices in the British periodicals, and these few are 
merely repetitions of the old jargon. All that has 
been said for example, might be summed up in 
some such paragraph as this: 

‘* “Orion’ is the earnest outpouring of the oneness 
of the psychological Man. It has the individuality 
of the true SINGLENEss. It is not to be regarded 
as a Poem, but as a WorRK—as a multiple THEOGONY 
—as a manifestation of the Works and the Days. 
It is a pinion in the ProGress—a wheel in the 
MovEMENT that moveth ever and goeth always— 


R. H. HORNE 26% 


a mirror of SELF-INsPEcTION, held up by the SEER 
of the Age essential—of the Age in esse—for the 
SEERS of the Ages possible—zn posse. We hail a 
brother in the work.” 

_- Of the mere opinions of the donkeys who bray 
thus—of their mere dogmas and doctrines, literary, 
esthetical, or what not—we know little, and, upon 
our honor, we wish to know less. Occupied, 
Laputically, in their great work of a progress that 
never progresses, we take it for granted, also, that 
they care as little about ours. But whatever the 
opinions of these people may be—however por- 
tentous the ‘“‘IpE4”’ which they have been so long 
threatening to “‘evolve’’—we still think it clear 
that they take a very roundabout way of evolving 
it. The use of Language is in the promulgation 
of Thought. If a man—if an Orphicist—or a SEER 
—or whatever else he may choose to call himself, 
while the rest of the world calls him an ass—if this 
gentleman have an idea which he does not under- 
stand himself, the best thing he can do is to say 
nothing about it; for, of course, he can entertain 
no hope that what he, the SEER, cannot comprehend, 
should be comprehended by the mass of common 
humanity; but if he have an idea which is actually 
intelligible to himself, and if he sincerely wishes to 
render it intelligible to others, we then hold it as 
indisputable that he should employ those forms 
of speech which are the best adapted to further 
his object. He should speak to the people in that 
people’s ordinary tongue. He should arrange words, 
such as are habitually employed for the several 
preliminary and introductory ideas to be conveyed— 
he should arrange them in collocations such as those 
in which we are accustomed to see those words 
arranged. 


ao2 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


But to all this the Orphicist thus replies: ‘I am 
a SEER. My IprEaA—the idea which by providence 
I am especially commissioned to evolve—is one so 
-vast—so novel—that ordinary words, in ordinary 
collocations, will be insufficient for its comfortable 
evolution.” Very true. We grant the vastness 
of the Ip—EA—it is manifested in the sucking of the 
thumb—but, then, if ordznary language be insufficient 
—ordinary language which men understand—dé 
fortiort will be insufficient that inordinate language 
which no man has ever understood, and which any 
well-educated baboon would blush in being accused 
of understanding. The ‘‘SEER,” therefore, has no 
resource but to oblige mankind by holding his 
tongue, and suffering his IpEA to remain quietly 
‘‘unevolved,”’ until some Mesmeric mode of inter- 
communication shall be invented, whereby the 
antipodal brains of the SEER and of the man of 
Common Sense shall be brought into the necessary 
rapport. Meantime we earnestly ask if bread-and- 
butter be the vast IDEA in question—if bread-and- 
butter be any portion of this vast IpEA; for we have 
often observed that when a SEER has to speak of 
even so usual a thing as bread-and-butter, he can 
never be induced to mention it outright. He will, 
if you choose, say anything and everything but 
bread-and-butter. He will consent to hint at 
buckwheat cake. He may even accommodate you 
so far as to insinuate oat...eal porridge—but, if 
bread-and-butter be re. ly the matter intended, 
we never yet met the O:phicist who could gct out 
the three individual words bread-and-butter.”’ 

We have already said that ‘‘Gregory the Seventh’”’ 
was unhappily infected with the customary cant 
of the day—the cant of the muddle-pates who 
dishonor a profound and ennobling philosophy 


R. H. HORNE 293 


by styling themselves transcendentalists. In fact, 
there are few highly sensitive or imaginative intellects 
for which the vortex of mysticism, in any shave, has 
not an almost irresistible influence, on account of 
the shadowy confines which separate the Unknown 
from the Sublime. Mr. Horne, then is, in some 
measure, infected. The success of his previous 
works has led him to attempt, zealously, the pro- 
duction of a poem which should be worthy his high 
powers. We have no doubt that he revolved 
carefully in mind a variety of august conceptions, 
and from these thoughtfully selected what his 
judgment, rather than what his impulses, designated 
as the noblest and the best. In a word, he has 
weakly yielded his own poetic sentiment of the 
poetic—yielded it, in some degree, to the pertinacious 
opinion, and talk, of a certain junto by which he is 
surrounded—a junto of dreamers whose absolute 
intellect may, perhaps, compare with his own very 
much after the fashion of an ant-hill with the Andes. 
By this talk—by its continuity rather than by any 
other quality it possessed—he has been badgered 
into the attempt at commingling the obstinate oils 
and waters of Poetry and of Truth. He has been 
so far blinded as to permit himself to imagine that 
a maudlin philosophy (granting it to be worth 
enforcing) could be enforced by poetic imagery, 
and illustrated by the jingling of rhythm; or, more 
unpardonably, he has been induced to believe that 
a poem, whose single object is the creation of Beauty 
—the novel collocation of old forms of the Beautiful 
and of the Sublime—could be advanced by the 
abstractions of a maudlin philosophy. 

But the question is not even this. It is not 
whether it be not possible to introduce didacticism, 
with effect, into a poem, or possible to introduce 


294 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


poetical images and measures, with effect, into a 
didactic essay. To do either the one or the other, 
would be merely to surmount a difficulty—would 
-be simply a feat of literary sleight of hand. But 
the true question is, whether the author who shall 
attempt either feat, will not be laboring at a dis- 
advantage—will not be guilty of a fruitless and 
wasteful expenditure of energy. In minor poetical 
efforts, we may not so imperatively demand an 
adherence to the true poetical thesis. We permit 
trifling to some extent, in a work which we consider 
a trifle at best. Although we agree, for example, 
with Coleridge, that poetry and passion are dis- 
cordant, yet we are willing to permit Tennyson to 
bring, to the intense passion which prompted his 
‘“Locksley Hall,” the aid of that terseness and 
pungency which are derivable from rhythm and 
from rhyme. The effect he produces, however, 
is a purely passionate, and not, unless in detached 
passages of this magnificent philippic, a properly 
poetic effect. His ‘‘Génone,’”’ on the other hand, 
exalts the soul not into passion, but into a con- 
ception of pure beauty, which in its elevation—its 
calm and intense rapture—has in it a foreshadowing 
of the future and spiritual life, and as far transcends 
earthly passion as the holy radiance of the sun does 
the glimmering and feeble phosphorescence of the 
glow-worm. His ‘‘Morte D’Arthur”’ is in the same 
majestic vein. The ‘‘Sensitive Plant” of Shelly 
is in the same sublime spirit. Nor, if the passionate 
poems of Byron excite more intensely a greater 
number of readers than either the ‘‘@Enone”’ or the 
“Sensitive Plant”—does this indisputable fact 
prove anything more than that the majority of 
mankind are more susceptible of the impulses of 
passion than of the impressions of beauty. Readers 


R. H. HORNE 293 


do exist, however, and always will exist, who, to 
hearts of maddening fervor, unite, in perfection, the 
sentiment of the beautiful—that divine sixth sense 
which is yet so faintly understood—that sense 
which phrenology has attempted to embody in its 
organ of zdeality—that sense which is the basis of 
all Cousin’s dreams—that sense which speaks of 
Gop through his purest, if not his sole attribute— 
which proves, and which alone proves his existence. 

To readers such as these—and only to such as 
these—must be left the decision of what the true 
Poesy is. And these—with no hesitation—will 
decide that the origin of Poetry lies in a thirst for 
a wilder Beauty than Earth supplies—that Poetry 
itself is the imperfect effort to quench this immortal 
thirst by novel combinations of beautiful forms 
(collocations of forms) physical or spiritual, and 
that this thirst when even partially allayed—this 
sentiment when even feebly meeting response— 
produces emotion to which all other human emotions 
are vapid and insignificant. 

We shall now be fully understood. If, with 
Coleridge, who, however erring at times, was 
precisely the mind fitted to decide a question such 
as this—if, with him, we reject passion from the 
true—from the pure poetry—if we reject even 
passion—if we discard as feeble, as unworthy the 
high spirituality of the theme, (which has its origin 
in a sense of the Godhead,) if we dismiss even the 
nearly divine emotion of human Jove—that emotion 
which, merely to name, causes the pen to tremble— 
with how much greater reason shall we dismiss all 
else? And yet there are men who would mingle 
with the august theme the merest questions of 
expediency—the cant topics of the day—the dog- 
gerel esthetics of the time—who would trammel 


296 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


the soul in its flight to an ideal Helusion, by the 
quirks and quibbles of chopped logic. There are 
men who do this—lately there are a set of men 
-who make a practice of doing this—and who defend 
it on the score of the advancement of what they 
suppose to’ be truth. Truth is, in its own essence, 
sublime—but her loftiest sublimity, as derived from 
man’s clouded and erratic reason, is valueless— 
is pulseless—is utterly ineffective when brought 
into comparison with the unerring sense of which 
we speak; yet grant this truth to be all which its 
seekers and worshippers pretend—they forget that 
it is not truth, ber se, which is made their thesis, 
but an argumentation, often maudlin and pedantic, 
always shallow and unsatisfactory (as from the 
mere inadaptation of the vehicle it must be) by 
which this truth, in casual and indeterminate 
glimpses, is—or 7s not—rendered manifest. 

We have said that, in minor poetical efforts, we 
may tolerate some deflection from the true poetical 
thesis; but when a man of the highest powers sets 
himself seriously to the task of constructing what 
shall be most worthy those powers, we expect that 
he shall so choose his theme as to render it certain 
that he labor not at disadvantage. We regret to 
see any trivial or partial imperfection of detail; 
but we grieve deeply when we detect any radical 
error of conception. 

In setting about ‘‘Orion,” Mr. Horne proposed 
to himself, (in accordance with the views of his 
junto) to ‘“‘elaborate a morality’’—he ostensibly 
proposed this to himself—for, in the depths of his 
heart, we know that he wished all juntos and all 
moralities in Erebus. In accordance with the 
notions of his set, however, he felt a species of 
shamefacedness in not making the enforcement 


R. H. HORNE 207 


of some certain dogmas or doctrines (questionable 
or unquestionable) about ProGreEss, the obvious 
or apparent object of his poem. This shamefaced- 
ness is the cue to the concluding sentence of the 
Preface. ‘‘Meantime, the design of this poem of 
‘Orion’ is far from being intended as a mere echo 
or reflection of the past, and is, in itself, and in 
other respects, a novel experiment upon the mind 
of a nation.’”’ Mr. Horne conceived, in fact, that 
to compose a poem merely for that poem’s sake— 
and to acknowledge such to be his purpose— 
would be to subject himself to the charge of imbe- 
cility—of triviality—of deficiency in the true dignity 
and force; but, had he listened to the dictates of 
his own soul, he could not have failed to perceive, 
at once, that under the sun there exists no work 
more intrinsically noble, than this very poem 
written solely for the poem’s sake. 

But let us regard “‘Orion”’ as it is. It has an 
under and an upper current of meaning; in other 
words, it is an allegory. But the poet’s sense of 
fitness (which, under no circumstances of mere 
conventional opinion, could be more than half 
subdued) has so far softened this allegory as to 
keep it, generally, well subject to the ostensible 
narrative. The purport of the moral conveyed is 
by no means clear—showing conclusively that the 
heart of the poet was not with it. It vacillates. 
At one time a certain set of opinions predominates— 
then another. We may generalize the subject, 
however, by calling it a homily against supineness 
or apathy in the cause of human PROGRESS, and in 
favor of energetic action for the good of the race. 
This is precisely the 1pEA of the present school of 
canters. How feebly the case is made out in the 
poem—how insufficient has been all Mr. Horne’s 


298 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


poetical rhetoric in convincing even himself—may 
be gleaned from the unusual bombast, rigmarole, 
and mystification of the concluding parag:aph, in 
which he has thought it necessary to say something 
very profound, by way of putting the sting to his 
epigram,—-the point to his moral. The words put 
us much in mind of the ‘‘nonsense verses” of 
Du Bartas. 


And thus, in the end each soul may to itself, 
With truth before it as its polar guide, 

Become both Time and Nature, whose fixt paths 
Are spiral, and when lost will find new stars, 
And in the universal MOVEMENT join. 


The upper current of the theme is based upon the 
various Greek fables about Orion. The author, in 
his brief preface, speaks about ‘‘writing from an 
old Greek fable’”—but his story is, more properly, 
a very judicious selection and modification of a 
great variety of Greek and Roman fables concerning 
Orion and other personages with whom these fables 
bring Orion in collision. And here we have only 
to object that the really magnificent abilities of 
Mr. Horne might have been better employed in an 
entirely original conception. ‘The story he tells 
is beautiful indeed,—and nil tetigit, certainly, quod 
non ornaviti—but our memories—our classic recollec- 
tions are continually at war with his claims to 
regard, and we too often find ourselves rather 
speculating upon what he might have done, than 
admiring what he has really accomplished. 

The narrative, as our poet has arranged it runs 
nearly thus: Orion, hunting on foot amid the 
mountains of Chios, encounters Artemis (Diana) 
with her train. The goddess, at first indignant 
at the giant’s intrusion upon her grounds, becomes, 


R. H. HORNE 299 


in the second place, enamored. Her pure love 
spiritualizes the merely animal nature of Orion, but 
does not render him happy. He is filled with vague 
aspirations and desires. He buries himself in 
sensual pleasures. In the mad dreams of intoxica- 
tion, he beholds a vision of Merope, the daughter 
of Gnopion, king of Chios. She is the type of 
physical beauty. She cries in his ear, ‘‘ Depart from 
Artemis! She loves thee not—thou art too full of 
earth.””’ Awaking, he seeks the love of Merope. 
It is returned. Cnopion, dreading the giant and 
his brethren, yet scorning his pretensions, temporizes. 
He consents to bestow upon Orion the hand of 
Merope, on condition of the island being cleared, 
within six days, of its savage beasts and serpents. 
Orion, seeking the aid of his brethren, accomplishes 
the task. C£nopion again hesitates. Enraged, the 
giants make war upon him, and carry off the princess. 
In a remote grove Orion lives, in bliss, with his 
earthly love. From this delirium of happiness, he 
is aroused by the vengeance of Cnopion, who 
causes him to be surprised while asleep, and deprived 
of sight. The princess, being retaken, immediately 
forgets and deserts her lover, who, in his wretched- 
ness, seeks, at the suggestion of a shepherd, the aid 
of Eos (Aurora) who, also becoming enamored of 
him, restores his sight. The love of Eos, less 
earthly than that of Merope, less cold than that of 
Artemis, fully satisfies his soul. He is at length 
happy. But the jealousy of Artemis destroys him. 
She pierces him with her arrows while in the very 
act of gratefully renovating her temple at Delos. 
In despair, Eos flies to Artemis, reproves her, 
represents to her the baseness of her jealousy and 
revenge, softens her, and obtains her consent to 
unite with herseli—with Eos—in a prayer to Zeus 


300 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


(Jupiter) for the restoration of the giant to life. 
The prayer is heard. Orion is not only restored to 
life, but rendered immortal, and placed among the 
_ constellations, where he enjoys forever the pure 
affection of Eos, and becomes extinguished, each 
morning, in her rays. 

In ancient mythology, the giants are meant to 
typify various energies of Nature. Pursuing, we 
suppose, this idea, Mr. Horne has made his own 
giants represent certain principles of human action 
or passion. Thus Orion himself is the Worker or 
Builder, and is the type of Action or Movement 
itself—but, in various portions of the poem, this 
allegorical character is left out of sight, and that 
of speculative philosophy takes its place; a mere 
consequence of the general uncertainty of purpose, 
which is the chief defect of the work. Sometimes 
we even find Orion a Destroyer in place of a Builder 
—as, for example, when he destroys the grove about 
the temple of Artemis, at Delos. Here he usurps > 
the proper allegorical attribute of Rhexergon, (the 
second of the seven giants named,) who is the 
Break-down, typifying the Revolutionary Prin- 
ciple. Autarces, the third, represents the Mob, or, 
more strictly, Waywardness—Capricious Action. 
Harpax, the fourth, serves for Rapine—Briastor, 
the fifth, for Brute Force—Encolyon, the sixth, 
the ‘‘Chainer of the Wheel,’ for Conservatism— 
and Akinetos, the seventh, and most elaborated, 
for Apathy. He is termed ‘‘The Great Unmoved,”’ 
and in his mouth is put all the ‘‘worldly wisdom,” 
or selfishness, <f the tale. The philosophy of 
Akinetos is, that no merely human exertion has any 
appreciable effect upon the Movement; and it is 
amusing to perceive how this great Truth (for most 
sincerely do we hold it to be such) speaks out from 





| THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 





a2 THE LIBRARY 





OF THE 
BRIWERSITY AF UPRABER 


R. H. HORNE 30% 


the real heart of the poet, through his Akinetos, 
in spite of all endeavor to overthrow it by the 
example of the brighter fate of Orion. 

The death of Akinetos is a singularly forcible 
and poetic conception, and will serve to show how 
the giants are made to perish, generally, during the 
story, in agreement with their allegorical natures. 
The “‘Great Unmoved” quietly seats himself in a 
cave after the death of all his brethren, except Orion. 


Thus Akinetos sat from day to day, 

Absorbed in indolent sublimity, 

Reviewing thoughts and knowledge o’er and o’er: 
And now he spake, now sang unto himself, 

Now sank to brooding silence. . From above, 
While passing, Time the rock touch’d, and it oozed 
Petrific drops—gently at first and slow. 

Reclining lonely in his fixed repose, 

The Great Unmoved unconsciously became 
Attached to that he pressed; and soon a part 

Of the rock. There clung th’ excrescence, till strong hands, 
Descended from Orion, made large roads, 

And bualt steep walls, squaring down rocks for use. 


The italicized conclusion of this fine passage 
affords an instance, however, of a very blameable 
concision, too much affected throughout the poem. 

In the deaths of Autarces, Harpax, and Encolyon, 
we recognise the same exceeding vigor of conception. 
These giants conspire against Orion, who seeks 
the aid of Artemis, who, in her turn, seeks the 
assistance of Phoibos (Phcebus.) The conspirators 
are in a cave, with Orion. 


Now Phoibus thro’ the cave 
Sent a broad ray! and lo! the solar beam 
Filled the great cave with radiance equable 
And not a cranny held one speck of shade. 
A moony halo round Orion came, 
As of some pure protecting influence, 


302 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


While with intense light glared the walls and roof, 
The heat increasing. The three giants stood 
With glazing eyes, fixed. Terribly the light 

Beat on the dazzled stone, and the cave hummed 
With reddening heat, till the red hair and beard 
Of Harpax showed no difference from the rest, 
Which once were iron-black. The sullen walls 
Then smouldered down to steady oven heat, 

Like that with care attain’d when bread has ceased 
Its steaming and displays an angry tan. 

The appalled faces of the giants showed 

Full consciousness of their immediate doom. 

And soon the cave a potter’s furnace glow’d 

Or kiln for largest bricks, and thus remained 

The while Orion, in his halo clasped 

By some invisible power, beheld the clay 

Of these his early friends change. Life was gone. 
Now sank the heat—the cave-walls lost their glare, 
The red lights faded, and the halo pale 

Around him, into chilly air expanded. 

There stood the three great images, in hue 

Of chalky white and red, like those strange shapes 
In Egypt’s ancient tombs; but presently 

Each visage and each form with cracks and flaws 
Was seamed, and the lost countenance brake up, 
As, with brief toppling, forward prone they fell. 


The deaths of Rhexergon and Biastor seem to 
discard (and this we regret not) the allegorical 
meaning altogether, but are related with even more 
exquisite richness and delicacy of imagination, 
than those of the other giants. Upon this occasion 
it is the jealousy of Artemis which destroys. 


—But with the eve 
Fatigue o’ercame the giants, and they slept. 
Dense were the rolling clouds, starless the glooms} 
But o’er a narrow rift, once drawn apart, 
Showing a field remote of violet hue, 
The high Moon floated, and her downward gleam 
Shone on the upturned giant faces. Rigid 
Each upper feature, loose the nether jaw; 


R. H. HORNE 303 


Their arms cast wide with open palms; their chests 
Heaving like some large engine. Near them lay 
Their bloody clubs, with dust and hair begrimed, 
Their spears and girdles, and the long-noosed thongs. 
Artemis vanished; all again was dark. 

With day’s first streak Orion rose, and loudly 

To his companions called. But still they slept. 
Again he shouted; yet no limb they stirred, 

Tho’ scarcely seven strides distant. He approached, 
And found the spot, so sweet with clover flower 

When they had casi them dvyn, was now arrayed 

With many-headed poppies, tke a crowd 

Of dusky Ethiops in a magic cirque 

Which had sprung up beneath them in the night, 

And all entranced the air. 


There are several minor defects in ‘‘Orion,” and 
we may as well mention them here. We sometimes 
meet with an instance of bad taste in a revolting 
picture or image; for example, at page 59, of this 
edition: 

Naught fearing, swift, brimful of raging life, 

Stuffning they lay in pools of jellied gore. 


Sometimes—indeed very often—we encounter an 
altogether purposeless oddness or foreignness of 
speech. For example, at page 78: 


As in Dodona once, ere driven thence 
By Zeus for that Rhexergon burnt some oaks. 


Mr. Horne will find it impossible to assign a good 
reason for not here using ‘‘because.”’ 

Pure vaguenesses of speech abound. For example, 
page 89: | 
one central heart wherein 
Time beats twin pulses with Humanity. 





Now and then sentences are rendered needlessly 
obscure through mere involution—as at page 103: 


304 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Star-rays that first played o’er my blinded orbs, 
E’en as they glance above the lids of sleep, 
Who else had never known surprise, nor hope, 
Nor useful action. 


Here the ‘‘who” has no grammatical antecedent, 
and would naturally be referred to sleep; whereas 
it is intended for ‘‘me,’’ understood, or involved, 
in the pronoun “‘my”; as if the sentence were 
written thus—‘‘rays that first played o’er the 
blinded orbs of me, who, &c.” It is useless to 
dwell upon so pure an affectation. 

The versification throughout is, generally, of a 
very remarkable excellence. At times, however, 
it is rough, to no purpose; as at page 44: 

And ever tended to some central point 

In some place—nought more could I understand, 


And here, at page 81: 


The shadow of a stag stoops to the stream 
Swift rolling toward the cataract and drinks deeply. 


The above is an unintentional and false Alex- 
andrine—including a foot too much, and that a 
trochee in place of an iambus. But here, at page 
106, we have the utterly unjustifiable anomaly of 
half a foot too little: 


And Eos ever rises circling 
The varied regions of mankind, &c. 


All these are mere inadvertences, of course; for the 
general handling of the rhythm shows the profound 
metrical sense of the poet. He is, perhaps, some- 
what too fond of ‘‘making the sound an echo to 
the sense.” ‘‘Orion” embodies some of the most 
remarkable instances of this on record; but if 
smoothness—if the true rhythm of a verse be 
sacrificed, the sacrifice is an error. The effect is 


R. H. HORNE 405 


only a beauty, we think, where no sacrifice is made 
in its behalf. It will be found possible to reconcile 
all the objects in view. Nothing can justify such 
lines as this, at page 69: 


As snake-songs midst stone hollows thus has taught me. 


We might urge, as another minor objection, that 
all the giants are made to speak in the same manner 
—with the same phraseology. Their characters 
are broadly distinctive, while their words are 
identical in spirit. There is sufficient individuality 
of sentiment, but little, or none, of language. 

We must object, too, to the personal and political 
allusions—to the Corn-Law question, for example 
—to Wellington’s statue, &c. These things, of 
course, have no business in a poem. 

We will conclude our fault-finding with the 
remark that, as a consequence of the one radical 
error of conception upon which we have commented 
at length, the reader’s attention, throughout, is 
painfully dzverted. He is always pausing, amid 
poetical beauties, in the expectation of detecting 
among them some philosophical, allegorical moral. 
Of course, he does not fully, because he cannot 
uniquely, appreciate the beauties. The absolute 
necessity of re-perusing the poem, in order thor- 
oughly to comprehend it, is also, most surely, to be 
regretted, and arises, likewise, from the one radical 
sin. 7 

But of the beauties of this most remarkable poem, 
what shall we say? And here we find it a difficult 
task to be calm. And yet we have never been 
accused of enthusiastic encomium. It is our deliber- 
ate opinion that, in all that regards the loftiest and 
holiest attributes of the true Poetry, ‘‘Orion” 
has never been excelled, Indeed, we feel strongly 

Vou. VI—20 


306 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


inclined to say that it has never been equalled. Its 
imagination—that quality which is all in all—is 
of the most refined—the most elevating—the most 
august character. And here we deeply regret that 
the necessary limits of this review will prevent us 
from entering, at length, into specification. In 
reading the poem, we marked passage after passage 
for extract—but, in the end, we found that we had 
marked nearly every passage in the book. We can 
now do nothing more than select afew. This, from 
page 3, introduces Orion himself, and we quote it, 
not only as an instance of refined and picturesque 
imagination, but as evincing the high artistical 
skill with which a scholar in spirit can paint an 
elaborate picture by a few brief touches. 


The scene in front two sloping mountains’ sides 
Displayed; in shadow one and one in light. 

The loftiest on its summit now sustained 

The sun-beams, raying like a mighty wheel 
Half seen, which left the forward surface dark 
In its full breadth of shade; the coming sun 
Hidden as yet behind; the other mount, 
Slanting transverse, swept with an eastward face, 
Catching, the golden light. Now while the peal 
Of the ascending chase told that the rout 

still midway rent the thickets, suddenly 

Along the broad and sunny slope appeared 

The shadow of a stag that fled across 

Followed by a giant’s shadow with a spear. 


These shadows are those of the coming Orion and 
his game. But who can fail to appreciate the 
intense beauty of the heralding shadows? Nor is 
this all. This ‘‘Hunter of shadows, he himself 
a shade,’’ is made symbolical, or suggestive, through- 
out the poem, of the speculative character of Orion; 
and occasionally, of his pursuit of visionary 
happiness. For example, at page 81, Orion, 


R. H. HORNE 307 


possessed of Merope, dwells with her in a remote 
and dense grove of cedars. Instead of directly 
describing his attained happiness—his perfected 
bliss—the poet, with an exalted sense of Art, for 
which we look utterly in vain in any other poem, 
merely introduces the image of the tamed or subdued 
shadow stag, quietly browsing and drinking beneath 
the cedars. 


There, underneath the boughs, mark where the gleam 
Of sun-rise thro’ the roofing’s chasm is thrown 
Upon a grassy plot below, whereon 

The shadow of a stag stoops to the stream, 

Swift rolling toward the cataract, and drinks. 
Throughout the day unceasingly it drinks, 

While ever and anon the nightingale, 

Not waiting for the evening, swells his hymn— 
His one sustained and heaven-aspiring tone— 
And when the sun hath vanished utterly, 

Arm over arm the cedars spread their shade, 
With arching wrist and long extended hands, 
And grave-ward fingers lengthening in the moon, 
Above that shadowy stag whose antlers still 
Hung o’er the stream. 


There is nothing more richly—more weirdly— 
more chastely—more sublimely imaginative—in the 
wide realm of poetical literature. It will be seen 
that we have enthusiasm—but we reserve it for 
pictures such as this: 

At page 62, Orion, his brethren dead, is engaged 
alone in extirpating the beasts from Chios. In 
the passages we quote, observe, in the beginning, 
the singular lucidness of detail; the arrangement 
of the barriers, &c., by which the hunter accomplishes 
his purpose, is given in a dozen lines of verse, with 
far more perspicuity than ordinary writers could 
give it in as many pages of prose. In this species 
of narration Mr. Horne is approached only by Moore 


308 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


in his ‘‘Alciphron.” In the latter portions of our 
extract, observe the vivid picturesqueness of the 
description. 


Four days remain, Fresh trees he felled and wove 
More barriers and fences; inaccessible 

To fiercest charge of droves, and to o’erleap 
Impossible. These walls he so arranged 

That to a common centre each should force 

The flight of those pursued; and from that centre 
Diverged three outlets. One, the wide expanse 
Which from the rocks and inland forests led; 

One was the clear-skyed windy gap above 

A precipice; the third, a long ravine 

Which through steep slopes, down to the seashore ran 
Winding, and then direct into the sea. 


Two days remain, Orion, in each hand 

Waving a torch, his course at night began, 

Through wildest haunts and lairs of savage beasts. 
With long-drawn howl, before him trooped the wolves— 
The panthers, terror-stricken, and the bears 

With wonder and gruff rage; from desolate crags, 
Leering hyenas, griffin, hippogrif, 

Skulked, or sprang madly, as the tossing brands 
Flashed through the midnight nooks and hollows cold, 
Sudden as fire from flint; o’er crashing thickets, 

With crouched head and curled fangs dashed the wild boar, 
Gnashing forth on with reckless impulses, 

While the clear-purposed fox crept closely down 

Into the underwood, to let the storm, 

Whate’er its cause, pass over, Through dark fens, 
Marshes, green rushy swamps, and margins reedy, 
Orion held his way—and rolling shapes 

Of serpent and of dragon moved before him 

With high-reared crests, swan-like yet terrible, 

And often looking back unth gem-like eyes. 


All night Orion urged his rapid course 

In the vex’d rear of the swift-droving din, 

And when the dawn had peered, the monsters all 
Were hemmed in barriers. These he now o’erheaped 


R. H. HORNE 3009 


With fuel through the day, and when again 
Night darkened, and the sea a gulf-like voice 
Sent forth, the barriers at all points he fired, 
Mid prayers to Hephzstos and his Ocean-Sire, 


Soon as the flames had eaten out a gap 

In the great barrier fronting the ravine 

That ran down to the sea, Orion grasped 

Two blazing boughs; one high in air he raised, 
The other, with its roaring foliage trailed 

Behind him as he sped. Onward the droves 

Of frantic creatures with one impulse rolled 
Before this night-devouring thing of flames, 
With multitudinous voice and downward sweep 
Into the sea, which now first knew a tide, 

And, ere they made one effort to regain 

The shore, had caught them in its flowing arms, 
And bore them past all hope. The living mass, 
Dark heaving o’er the waves resistlessly, 

At length, in distance, seemed a circle small, 
Midst which one creature in the centre rose, 
Conspicuous tn the long, red quivering gleams 

That from the dying brands streamed o’er the waves. 
It was the oldest dragon of the fens, 

Whose forky flag-wings and horn-crested head 

O’er crags and marshes regal sway had held; 

And now he rose up like an embodied curse, 

From all the doomed, fast sinking—some just sunk— 
Looked landward o’er the sea, and flapped hts vans, 
Uniil Poseidon drew them swirling down. 


Poseidon (Neptune) is Orion’s father, and lends 
him his aid. The first line italicized is an example 
of sound made echo to sense. The rest we have 
merely emphasized as peculiarly imaginative. 

At page 9, Orion thus describes a palace built 
by him for Hephestos (Vulcan.) 


But, ere a shadow-hunter I became— 

A dreamer of strange dreams by day and night— 
For him I built a palace underground, 

Of iron, black and rough as his own hands. 


310 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


Deep in the groaning disemboweled earth, 

The tower-broad pillars and huge stanchions, 
And slant supporting wedges I set up, 

Aided by the Cyclops who obeyed my voice, 
Which through the metal fabric rang and pealed 
In orders echoing far, like thunder-dreams. 

With arches, galleries and domes all carved— 
So that great figures started from the roof 

And lofty coignes, or sat and downward gazed 
On those who stood below and gazed above— 

I filled it; in the centre framed a hall; 

Central in that, a throne; and for the light, 
Forged mighty hammers that should rise and fall 
On slanted rocks of granite and of flint, 

Worked by a torrent, for whose passage down 

A chasm I hewed. And here the God could take, 
Midst showery sparks and swathes of broad gold fire 
Hs lone repose, lulled by the sounds he loved: 
Or, casting back the hammer-heads till they choked 
The water’s course, enjoy, uf so he wished, 
Midnight tremendous, silence, and tron sleep. 


The description of the Hell in ‘‘Paradise Lost” 
is altogether infertor in graphic effect, in originality, 
in expression, in the true imagination—to these 
magnificent—to these unparalleled passages. For 
this assertion there are tens of thousands who will 
condemn us as heretical; but there are a ‘‘chosen 
few” who will feel, in their inmost souls, the simple 
truth of the assertion. The former class would at 
least be silent, could they form even a remote con- 
ception of that contempt with which we hearken to 
their conventional jargon. 

We have room for no further extracts of length; 
out we refer the reader who shall be so fortunate 
as to procure a copy of ‘‘Orion,’”’ to a passage at 
page 22, commencing 


One day at noontide, when the chase was done. 


R. H. HORNE art 


It is descriptive of a group of lolling hounds, 
intermingled with sylvans, fawns, nymphs, and 
oceanides. We refer him also to page 25, where 
Orion, enamored of the naked beauty of Artemis, 
is repulsed and frozen by her dignity. These lines 
end thus: 


And ere the last collected shape he saw 

Of Artemis, dispersing fast amid 

Dense vapory clouds, the aching wintriness 
Had risen to his teeth, and fixed his eyes, 
Like glistening stones in the congealing air. 


We refer, especially, too, to the description of 
Love, at page 29; to that of a Bacchanalian orgie, 
at page 34; to that of drought succeeded by rain, 
at page 70; and to that of the palace of Eos, at page 
104. 

Mr. Horne has a very peculiar and very delightful 
faculty of enforcing, or giving vitality to a picture, 
by some one vivid and intensely characteristic 
point or touch. He seizes the most salient feature 
of his theme, and makes this feature convey the 
whole. The combined ndiveté and picturesqueness 
of some of the passages thus enforced, cannot be 
sufficiently admired. For example: 


The archers soon 
With bow-arm forward thrust, on all sides twanged 
Around, above, below. 


Now, it is this thrusting forward of the bow-arm 
which is the idiosyncrasy of the action of a mass 
of archers. Again: Rhexergon and his friends 
endeavor to persuade Akinetos to be king. Observe 
the silent refusal of Akinetos—the peculiar passtve- 
ness of his action—if we may be permitted the 
paradox. 


312 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


“Rise, therefore, Akinetos, thou art king.” 
So saying, in his hand he placed a spear. 
As though against a wall ’twere sent aslant, 
Flaily the long spear fell upon the ground. 


Here again: Merope departs from Chios in a 
ship. 


And, as it sped along, she closely pressed 

The rich globes of her bosom on the side 

O’er which she bent with those black eyes, and gazed 
Into the sea that fled beneath her face. 


The fleeing of the sea beneath the face of one 
who gazes into it from a ship’s side, is the idiosyn- 
crasy of the action—of the subject. It is that 
which chiefly impresses the gazer. 

We conclude with some brief quotations at ran- 
dom, which we shall not pause to classify. Their 
merits need no demonstration. They gleam with 
the purest imagination. They abound in pic- 
turesqueness—force—happily chosen epithets, each 
in itself a picture. They are redolent of all for 
which a poet will value a poem. 


~—her silver sandals glane’d i’ the rays, 
As doth a lizard playing on a hill, 
And on the spot where she that instant stood 
Naught but the bent and quivering grass was seen, 


Above the Isle of Chios, night by night, 

The clear moon lingered ever on her course 
Covering the forest foliage, where it swept 

In its unbroken breadth along the slopes, 

With placid silver; edging leaf and trunk 

Where gloom clung deep around; but chiefly sought 
With melancholy splendor to allume 

The dark-mouthed caverns where Orion lay, 

Dreaming among his kinsmen. 


R. H. HORNE 313 


The ocean realm below, and all its caves 
And bristling vegetation, plant and flower, 
And forests in their dense petrific shade 
Where the tides moan for sleep that never come 


A fawn, who on a quiet green knoll sat 
Somewhat apart, sang a melodious ode, 

Made rich by harmonies of hidden strings. 
Autarces seized a satyr, with intent, 

Despite his writhing freaks and furious face, 

To dash him on a gong, but that amidst 

The struggling mass Encolyon thrust a pine, 
Heavy and black as Charon’s ferrying pole, 
O’er which they, lke a bursting billow, fell. . . « 


then round the blaze, 

Thetr shadows brandishing afar and athwart, 
Over the level space and up the hills, 

Six giants held portentous dance. .... 





his safe return 
To corporal sense, by shaking off these nets 
Of moonbeams from his soul. .... 





old memories 

slumberously hung above the purple line 

Of distance, to the East, while odorously 
Glistened the tear-drops of a new fall’n shower. . « 





Sing on! 
Sing on, great tempest! in the darkness sing! 
Thy madness is a music that brings calm 
Into my central soul; and from its waves, 
That now with joy begin to heave and gush, 
The burning image of all life’s desire, 
Like an absorbing, fire breathed, phantom god, 
Rises and floats! here touching on the foam, 
There hovering o’er it; ascending swift 
Starward, then swooping down the hemisphere 
Upon the lengthening javelins of the blastl. .. + « 


Now a sound we heard, 
Like to some well-known voice in prayer; and next 
An iron clang that seemed to break great bonds 
Beneath the earth, shook us to conscious life. ... 


314 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


It is Oblivion! In his hand—though naught 
Knows he of this—a dusky purple flower 

Droops over its tall stem. Again! ah see! 

He wanders into mist and now is lost!— 

Within his brain what lovely realms of death 

Are pictured, and what knowledge through the doors 
Of his forgetfulness of all the earth 

A path may gain? 


But we are positively forced to conclude. It was 
our design to give ‘‘Orion”’ a careful and methodical 
analysis—thus to bring clearly forth its multitudi- 
nous beauties to the eye of the American public. 
Our limits have constrained us to treat it in an 
imperfect and cursory manner. We have had to 
content ourselves chiefly with assertion, where 
our original purpose was to demonstrate. We have 
left unsaid a hundred things which a well-grounded 
enthusiasm would have prompted us to say. One 
thing however, we must and will say, in conclusion. 
“Orion”’ will be admitted, by every man of genius, 
to be one of the noblest, if not the very noblest 
poetical work of the age. Its defects are trivial and 
conventional—its beauties intrinsic and supreme. 


THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 31s 


THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY* 


ACAULAY has obtained a reputation 
M which, although deservedly great, is yet 
in a remarkable measure undeserved. 

The few who regard him merely as a terse, forcible 
and logical writer, full of thought; and abounding 
in original views, often sagacious and never other- 
wise than admirably expressed—appear to us pre- 
cisely in the right. The many who look upon him as 
not only all this, but as a comprehensive and pro- 
found thinker, little prone to error, err essentially 
themselves. The source of the general mistake lies 
in a very singular consideration—yet in one upon 
which we do not remember ever to have heard a word 
of comment. We allude toa tendency in the public 
mind towards logic for logic’s sake—a liability to 
confound the vehicle with the conveyed—an aptitude 
to be so dazzled by the luminousness with which an 
idea is set forth, as to mistake it for the luminous- 
ness of the idea itself. The error is one exactly anal- 
ogous with that which leads the immature poet to 
think himself sublime wherever he is obscure, be- 
cause obscurity is a source of the sublime—thus con- 
founding obscurity of expression with the expression 
of obscurity. In the case of Macaulay—and we may 
say, en passant, of our own Channing—we assent to 
what he says, too often because we so very clearly un- 
derstand what it is that he intends tosay. Compre- 
hending vividly the points and the sequence of his 


* “Critical and Miscellaneous Essays.” By T. Babington 
Macaulay. Carey & Hart: Philadelphia. 


316 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


argument, we fancy that we are concurring in the 
argument itself. It is not every mind which is at 
once able to analyze the satisfaction it receives 
from such essays as we see here. If it were merely 
beauty of style for which they were distinguished 
—if they were remarkable only for rhetorical 
flourishes—we would not be apt to estimate these 
flourishes at more than their due value. We 
would not agree with the doctrines of the essay- 
ist on account of the elegance with which they 
were urged. On the contrary, we would be in- 
clined to disbelief. But when all ornament save 
that of simplicity is disclaimed—when we are at- 
tacked by precision of language, by perfect accu- 
racy of expression, by directness and singleness 
of thought, and above all by a logic the most rigor- 
ously close and consequential—is it hardly a matter 
for wonder that nine of us out of ten are content to 
rest in the gratification thus received as in the grati- 
fication of absolute truth. 

Of the terseness and simple vigor of Macaulay’s 
style it is unnecessary to point out instances. Every 
one will acknowledge his merits on this score. His 
exceeding closeness of logic, however, is more es- 
pecially remarkable. With this he suffers nothing 
to interfere. Here, for example, is a sentence in 
which, to preserve entire the chain of his argument 
—to leave no minute gap which the reader might have 
to fill up with thought—he runs into most unusual 
tautology. 

‘‘The books and traditions of a sect may contain, 
mingled with propositions strictly theological, other 
propositions, purporting to rest on the same au- 
thority, which relate to physics. If new discoveries 
should throw discredit on the physical propositions, 
the theological propositions, unless they can be sepa- 


THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 317 


reted from the physical propositions, will share in 
their discredit.” 

These things are very well in their way; but it is 
indeed questionable whether they do not appertain 
rather to the trickery of thought’s vehicle, than to 
thought itself—rather to reason’s shadow than to 
reason. Truth, for truth’s sake, is seldom so 
enforced. It is scarcely too much to say that the 
style of the profound thinker is never closely logical. 
Here we might instance George Combe—than whom 
a more candid reasoner never, perhaps, wrote or 
spoke—than whom a more complete antipode to 
Babington Macaulay there certainly never existed. 
The former reasons to discover the true. The latter 
argues to convince the world, and, in arguing, 
not unfrequently suprises himself into conviction. 
What Combe appears to Macaulay it would be a 
difficult thing to say. What Macaulay is thought 
of by Combe we can understand very well. The 
man who looks at an argument in its details alone, 
will not fail to be misled by the one; while he who 
keeps steadily in view the generality of a thesis will 
always at least approximate the truth under guid- 
ance of the other. 

Macaulay’s tendency—and the tendency of mere 
logic in general—to concentrate force upon minutie, 
at the expense of a subject as a whole, is well in- 
stanced in an article (in the volume now before us) 
on Ranke’s History of the Popes. This article is 
called a review—Possibly because it is anything else 
—as lucus is lucus a non lucendo. In fact it is noth- 
ing more than a beautifully written treatise on the 
main theme of Ranke himself; the whole matter of 
the treatise being deduced from the History. Inthe 
way of criticism there is nothing worth the name. 
The strength of the essayist is put forth to account 


318 EDGAR ALLAN POE 


for the progress of Romanism by maintaining that 
divinity is not a progressive science. The enigmas, 
says he is in substance, which perplex the natural 
theologian are the same in all ages, while the Bible, 
where alone we are to seek revealed truth, has al- 
ways been what it is. 

The manner in which these two neat are 
set forth, is a model for the logician and for the stu- 
dent of belles lettres—yet the error into which the 
essayist has rushed headlong, is egregious. He 
attempts to deceive his readers, or has deceived him- 
self, by confounding the nature of that proof from — 
which we reason of the concerns of earth, considered 
as man’s habitation, and the nature of that evidence 
from which we reason of the same earth regarded as 
a unit of that vast whole, the universe. In the for- 
mer case the data being palpable, the proof is direct: 
in the latter itis purely analogical. Were the indica- 
tions we derive from science, of the nature and designs 
of Deity, and thence, by inference, of man’s destiny 
—were these indications proof direct, no advance in 
science would strengthen them—for, as our author 
truly observes, ‘“‘nothing could be added to the force 
of the argument which the mind finds in every beast, 
bird, or flower’’—but as these indications are rigidly 
analogical, every step in human knowledge—every 
astronomical discovery, for instance—throws addi- 
tional light upon the august subject, by extending 
the range of analogy. That we know no more to- 
day of the nature of Deity—of its purposes—and 
thus of man himself—than we did even a dozen 
years ago—is a proposition disgracefully absurd; 
and of this any astronomer could assure Mr. Macau- 
lay. Indeed, to our own mind, the only irrefutable ar- 
gument in support of the soul’s immortality—or, 
rather the only conclusive proof of man’s alternate 


THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 319 


dissolution and re-juvenescence ad infinitum—is to be 
found in analogies deduced from the modern estab- 
lished theory of the nebular cosmogony.* Mr. 
Macaulay, in short, has forgotten that he frequently 
forgets, or neglects,—the very gist of his subject. 
He has forgotten that analogical evidence cannot, 
at all time, be discoursed of as if identical with 
proof direct. Throughout the whole of his treatise 
he has made no distinction whatever. 

* This cosmogony demonstrates that all existing bodies in the 
universe are formed of a nebular matter, a rare ethereal 
medium, pervading space—shows the mode and laws of 


formation—and proves that all things are in a perpetual state 
of progress—that nothing in nature is perfected. 














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